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North Carolina State Normal & Industrial College 
Historical Publications 

Number 3 



Ante-Bellum Builders of North Carolina 



By R. D. W. Connor 

Secretary North Carolina Historical Commission 
Lecturer on North Carolina History, State Normal College 



Issued under the Dii'ection of the Department of History 
W. C. JACKSON, Editor 



PUBLISHED BY THE COLLEGE 
1914 



iH*t«sra»i2 



North Carolina State Normal & Industrial 
College Historical Publications 

Price; Fifty Cents Each 



Xuinber 1— Race Elements in the White Population 
of North Carolina (In Press). 

K. D. W. Connor 

Number 2 — Revolutionary Leaders in North Caro- 
lina (In Press) 1!. D. W. Coxxoi; 

Number 3 — Ante-BcUum Builders of North Carolina 

R. D. W. Connor 






North Carolina State Normal & Industrial College 
Historical Publications 



Number 3 



Ante-Bellum Builders oe North Carolina 



By R. D. W. Connor 
I) 

Secretary North Carolina Historical Commission 
Lecturer on North Carolina History, State Normal College 



Issued under the Direction of the Department of History 

W. C. JACKSOT^, Editor 



PUBLISHED BY THE COLLEGE 
1914 






Preface 



The contents of this number of the Historical 
Publications consist of a set of lectures delivered at 
the College, in the Spring of 1914, by Mr. R. D. W. 
Connor. This is the third set in the series of Mr. 
Connor's lectures, the former sets constituting Num- 
bers 1 and 2 of these Puhlications. 

The Editor. 



0. OF 0. 
JtJL 19 (915 



Ante-Bellum Builders of North Carolina 



r/ 



INTRODUCTION 

J 11 tlie course of the lectures which it was my privi- 
lejie to deliver before you hist spring, as perhaps 
some of you may recall, I discussed the careers of 
four North Carolina statesmen of the Eevolution, 
and through their activities traced the history of the 
State from the beginning of the revolt against the 
mother conntiy in 17(5;"), tlirongh tlie inauguration of 
the Kevolution, the organization of the State gov- 
ernment, and the acliievement of independence, to 
the ratitication of the Federal Constitution in 1785). 

It is my present intention to take up the discus- 
sion at this point, and through the careers of four 
other North Carolina statesmen of a later period to 
study the educational, industrial and political 
achievements that characterized tlie history of North 
Carolina during the first half of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. But before entering upon the careers of these 
"Ante-liellum Builders of North Carolina," it is 
necessary that we take a rapid survey of the tield 
in which they toiled and of the conditions under 
which they labored. Today, therefore, I shall ask 
your attention to a brief discussion of the educa- 
tional, industrial and political conditions that pre- 
vailed in North Carolina during the half-century 
from 1790 to 1840. We shall find in this survey, I 
fear, but little to arouse vour interest and still less 



4 Ante-Bellum Builders 

to excite your pride, for I must tell j^ou that during 
the whole of this period the State undertook no great 
enterprise for the material, intellectual or social bet- 
terment of her people, and that its story is the dreari- 
est, most uninspiring chapter in our history. Never- 
theless, if we look below the surface of the events of 
this period we shall discover the undercurrents of a 
great movement which, beginning in its early years 
and bringing it to a close in triumph, saves it from 
utter barrenness and makes it an instructive period 
for study. This movement was the origin, rise and 
growth of democracy without which neither the re- 
markable industrial and educational development of 
the two decades from 1840 to 1860, nor the heroic 
achievements of the State from 1860 to 1865, would 
have been possible. 

I shall begin this survey with a glance at the edu- 
cational conditions in North Carolina during these 
fifty years under consideration. Those of us who 
have lived to see the first monument ever erected to 
a North Carolina statesman entirely by jtopular sub- 
scription, erected to the founder of the Slate's lead- 
ing college for women, and who have lived through 
the administration of a great Chief Magistrate of 
the Commonwealth whose highest claim to a ])erma- 
nent i)lace in history is his service as "The Educa- 
tional Governor," can scarcely realize the utter in- 
dilference to education that prevailed among the peo- 
I)le of North Carolina from 1700 to 1840. To make 
these conditions as real as possible to you is the task 
Avhich 1 now aj)proach. It is not a |)Ieasant task, 
yet, fortunately, it is not one void of instruction. 
Indeed, I know of no subject in North Carolina his- 
tory that will better rejiay careful study than the 



Historical Pubijcations 5 

fifty years of aj^itiilioii iliat inocedod the establish- 
meiit ill 1840 of our aiilo helluiii conmioii school sys- 
tem. 

In 178G a Iravoller of uneoniinon intc^llij^ciui", after 
inakiii<»; a tour from iMleiiton to Charlotte, entered in 
his journal the assertion tliat no State in the Union 
at lha( i»erioil had done so little to promote the cause 
of education, science and the arts as North Carolina, 
and he observed that the great mass of the people 
were in a state of great mental degradation.^ These 
statements are borne out by Archibald i). Murphey, 
who tells us that in 1794 there were but three schools 
in tlui State in which the I'udiments of a classical 
education could be acquired, that in the best of these 
the opportunities for instruction were very limited, 
that except for a few Latin and (Jreek classics the 
students had access to no books of history or litera- 
ture, and that it was impossible to realize the diffi- 
culties under which the student of that day labored 
in his search for an education.^ This statement, the 
result of Murphey's own personal experience, was 
made in 1827, and even at that day the conditions 
had improved but little. Indeed, there were to be 
found intelligent people who did not think conditions 
were any better then than they were when North Car- 
olina was a colony of the British Crown. Our his- 
torians have always found great satisfaction in ex- 
cusing the lack of educational facilities in North 
Carolina during colonial days by declaring that the 
King vetoed every measure passed by the General 



1. Watson, Elkanah: Men and Times of the Revolution, 290. 

2. Hoyt, W. Henry (ed): Papers of Archibald D. Murphey 

(la Press). 



6 Ante-Bellum Builders 

Assembly for the establishment of public schools; 
but we can lay no such unction to our souls nor ease 
our minds by thus shifting to the shoulders of an 
unpopular potentate the blame for lack of educa- 
tional facilities lifty years after the Declaration of 
Independence. In 182G, the semi-centennial year of 
independence, a governor of North Carolina in his 
annual message to the Legislature, told the law- 
makers of the State that many enlightened persons 
believed that it was more ditlicult to obtain a pri- 
mary education in North Carolina at that time than 
it was in 1770.^ 

There has come down to us a description of educa- 
tional conditions in Edgecombe, a typical eastern 
county, and in Caswell, a typical western county, in 
1810, and these two counties may safely be taken as 
typical of the State. The former description was 
written by Dr. Jeremiah Battle, a prominent phy- 
sician of Edgecombe, the latter by Bartlett Yancey, 
one of the most distinguished men the State has pro- 
duced. ^ Both made a careful study of all the data 
available before preparing their articles which we 
may, accordingly, accept as accurate and reliable. 

Dr. Battle declares that a thirst for knowledge had 
never distinguished the people of Edgecombe, a state- 
ment easily enough accepted for it is coupled with 
another statement that out of a total white popula- 
tion of about eight thousand, only 108 persons could 
be found who subscribed to a newspaper. For fifty 



1. Gov. Burton to the General Assembly. Coon, Charles L., 

(ed) : Public Education in North Carolina, 1790-1840, 
Vol. I., 294. 

2. Ibid. I., 64-72. 



OF North Carolina 7 

years the ooiiuty had boasted of but two schools, and 
before the opening of the University in 1795 "no chil- 
dren were sent out of the county to any college or 
academy." In ISIO there were seventeen schools in 
the county but none of them attemi)ted to teach any- 
thing beyond the elements of reading, writing and 
arithmetic, and but few of the teachers were compe- 
tent to teach these. Dr. Battle laments the general 
indifierence to education i)revalent among the people. 
IIow general this indifference was is evident from the 
fact that not moie than two-thirds of the people 
could read, and that not above one-half the men and 
one-third the women could write their names. It is 
no wonder, therefore, that Dr. Battle was compelled 
to confess that "the county has never been prolific in 
men of talents, or they have been obscured for want 
of opportunities of education.'' 

Bartlett Yancey sets for himself the task of de- 
scribing the "progress of society and civilization" in 
Caswell county, which, he observes, is dependent 
upon "the education and virtue of the people." This 
])rogress, he declares, was greater in the decade from 
IS(K) to 1810 than during the fifty years jjreceding. 
It is interesting to note the facts from which he 
draws his conclusions. In 1800 not more than one- 
half the people could "read, write and cypher as far 
as the rule of three," and in 1810 "many of the in- 
ferior class of society" appear more depraved than 
ever." At that time but one academy was in opera- 
tion in the county, and since 1805 the number of stu- 
dents enrolled in that one had decreased from sixty- 
five to thirty-eight. It is true another academy had 
until recently been in existence, but for the last five 
years it had been "on ti decline," and in July, 1810, 



8 Ante-Bellum Builders 

"some vile incendiary put fire to it for the purpose 
of consuming it," which purpose was very effectually 
accomplished. Yancey reluctantly admits that Cas- 
well county had never been distinguished for its 
great men but declares that it could point to a large 
number ''entitled to the rank of mediocrity, and some 
above it," and he finds much satisfaction in the fact 
that these were all natives for he proudly tells us 
''we have no spreeing Irishmen, revolutionizing 
Frenchmen, or speculating Scotchmen among us." 

Passing now from these two counties to the State 
as a whole, we find that conditions were the same 
everywhere. In 1810 a writer in the Ealeigh Star 
could enumerate only twent}^ academies and gram- 
mar schools in the State, while the University, after 
fifteen years of precarious existence, "deserted and 
frowned upon by the Legislature," could muster only 
sixty-five students.^ Six years later Archibald D. 
Murphey declared that the elementary education of 
children in North Carolina was left in a large meas- 
ure to chance, and that thousands were accordingly 
growing up in total ignorance of their religious and 
moral duties.^ John M. Walker, a member of the 
General Assembly, warned the Legislature of 1817 
not to be "tantalized by the deceptive appearance of 
progressive education in our State," for while each 
county was vying with the others in erecting acad- 
emies, the great mass of the people were destitute of 
schools. "It is a melancholy fact," he declares, "that 
our schools are lessening in their number and useful- 



1. Ibid. I., 73. 

2. Report of 1816. Coon: Pub. Ed. in N. C, I. 105-111; 

Hoyt: Papers of Archibald D. Murphey. 



OF North Carolina 9 

ness,"i In 1S2J) Josej»h Caldwell, president of the 
University, declared that North Carolina was three 
centuries behind the other States in the education of 
her children, and that a j^reat many people actually 
boasted of their ignoi'ance of letlers.^ Nine years 
later the Chairman of the Committee on Education 
in the State senate said in his rejiort that ''in the 
homes of thousan<ls now in North Carolina are to be 
found children of all ages from infancy to m.tiiliood, 
who are in the most i)erfect state of igiiorame ;ind 
vice and who have never been and ]>erhaps never may 
be able 1o read the first sentence in the Bible. . . . 
Those who have mixed much with the ])eo])le of our 
State, know that there is an average of nearly one- 
half in every family of the State who have received 
no education and who are as yet unprovided with the 
means of learning even to read and write."^ 

After hearing these statements of men in positions 
to know the facts you will not be surprised to learn 
that a careful estimate, made in 18^38, placed the 
number of illiterate children in the State between 
five and fifteen years of age, at 120,000 ;* and that 
the United States Census of 1840 revealed to the 
world the humiliating fact that, after more than 
sixty years of independence, one-third of the adult 
white population of North Carolina could neither 
read nor write. 

Were I to bring this survev of educational condi- 



1. Report of 1817. Coon: Pub. Ed. in N. C, I., 147-64. 

2. Coon: Pub. Ed. in N. C, I., 434. 

3. William W. Cherry's report. Coon: Pub. Ed. in N. C, II., 

857-65. 

4. By Rev. A. J. Leavenworth, of Charlotte. Coon: Pub. 

Ed. in N. C, II., 813. 



10 Antk-Bellum Builders 

tious in North Carolina to a close at this point, I 
should leave the most important part of my story 
untold, be guilty of neglecting my duty to you, and 
do a grave injustice to the State which we all love. 
I would not have j^ou suppose that during all these 
years no statesman could be found in North Carolina 
with the wisdom, the courage and the ])atriotism to 
protest against these conditions. Indeed, no great 
movement in all our history, not even the epochal 
period of Revolution which changed the currents of 
the political life of the State, nor the epic ])eriod of 
Civil War which struck dee]) down under the roots 
of her social life, brought to the forefront a group of 
statesmen of greater abilities, of more farseeing 
vision, of more determined purpose, or of more splen- 
did patriotism than did the movement for the educa- 
tional uplift of the i^eople of this State which result- 
ed in the organization here in North Carolina of the 
first complete public school system in the South. In 
this group are to be found every goNernor from 1802 
to 1840, save one, besides Archibald 1). Murphey, 
Bartlett Yancey, Joseph (Jaldwell and numerous 
others only less famous. The splendid victory which 
these men won can not be properly appreciated un- 
less we get some idea of the obstacles against which 
they had to struggle. Besides the general ignorance 
of the people, which 1 have already sufficiently dis- 
cussed, there may be mentioned two very serious ob- 
stacles. First, the low educational ideals of the 
time; second, the indifference of the Legislature. 

There is perhai)s no better standard by which to 
judge a ])eople's educational ideals than the estimate 
in which they hold the teacher and the teaching pro- 
fession. In the following graphic description of the 



OF North Carolina 11 

qualificiitioiiH deniaiided in ISIW of a school teacher, 
Joseph Caldwell gives us a vivid ini])resaioii of the 
educational ideals prevalent at that time. Says he : 

"111 oni- ]>i'cs<'iit mode of popular education, we act 
upon the i)rinciple that school -keeping is a business 
to which sea reel}' any one but an idiot is incompe- 
tent, if he only knows reading, writing and arithme- 
tic. ... Is a man constitutionally and habitually in- 
dolent, a burden ui)on all from whom he can extract 
a support? Then there is one way of shaking him otf, 
let us make him a schoolmaster. . . . Has any man 
wasted all his projierty, or ended in debt by indiscre 
lion and misconduct? The business of school keep- 
ing stands wide open for his reception, and here he 
sinks to the bottom, for want of capacity to support 
himself. Has any one ruined himself, and done all 
he could to corrniit others, by dissipation, drinking, 
seduction, and a course of irregularities? Nay, has 
he returned from a prison after an ignominious 
atonement for some violation of the laws? He is 
destitute of character and can not be trusted, but 
jiresently he ojiens a school and the children are seen 
flocking to it, for if he is willing to act in that capac- 
ity, we shall all admit that as he can read and write, 
and cypher to the square root, he will make an ex- 
cellent schoolmaster. ... Is it strange that in the 
eyes of thousands, when education is spoken of, you 
can read a most distinct expression that it is a poor 
and valueless thing? . . . Let any ])rofession be 
wholly consigned to occui)ants so wretchedly desti- 
tute of every qualification in skill and principle, let 
it be known to the people only in such defective and 
degrading forms, and how can it be otherwise than 



12 Ante-Bellum Builders 

contemptible, and all that is connected with it of lit- 
tle or no worth ?"i 

Such, indeed, seems to have been the opinion of 
the General Assembly of North Carolina. Although 
the Constitution contained a requirement that "a 
school or schools shall be established by the Legisla- 
ture, for the convenient instruction of youth, with 
such salaries to the masters, paid by the public, as 
may enable them to instruct at low prices," although 
governor after governor urged the Legislature to 
obey this command, although numerous bills with 
this object in view were supported in the General 
Assembly by powerful argument and eloquence, nev- 
ertheless, for more than half a century-, in spite of 
constitutional obligations, in spite of urgent appeals 
from a dozen governors, in spite of the cogent logic 
of senators and representatives of the people, the 
General Assembly turned a deaf ear to every proposi- 
tion designed to bring the means of education within 
reach of the masses. 

Many of the governors strongly reproached the 
Legislature for its indifference to the subject. In 
1822 Governor Holmes said : "Our Constitution has 
made it your duty to encourage and promote every 
kind of useful learning. Its wise and patriotic 
framers, . . . ordained it to be their own duty and the 
duty of their sons, ... to diffuse learning among the 
people. ... I fear, gentlemen, if those venerable 
fathers were to rise from their tombs, they would re- 
proach us with supineness and neglect."^ Two jeavH 
later he apologized for again referring to the subject. 



1. Coon: Pub. Ed. in N. C. II, 860. 

2. Ibid, I., 193-94. 



OP North Carolina 13 

sayinc;: "T Imve hai']>e(l on il so ufien (and as often, 
I presume, have my predecessors) that I now tom-h 
the chord with almost hopeless expectations and 
frigid inditference."! In IS^a, (Governor Swain, in 
his last message, took a parting shot at the Legisla- 
ture by declaring that the history of that body for 
tifty years would exhibit to posterity little more than 
the annual im]io.-iition of taxes, one-half of which was 
spent on the Legislature itself, and the other half on 
the train of officers who superintended the machinery 
of government. "The establishment of schools for 
the convenient instruction of youth, and the develop- 
ment and improvement of our interiml resources , . .' 
he said, "will seem scarcely to have been regarded as 
proper objects of legislative concern.-'^ 

Were these strictures of the executive department 
on the legislative department just? From 1790 to 
1802 not a single measure relating to public educa- 
tion was considered by the Legislature. In 1802 a 
plan for establishing a State Military School was 
rejected.'^ In 1808 two bills for the establishment of 
public acadamies were killed.^ During the next 
eleven years the subject of education was not even 
considered at all by the Legislature. It was not until 
1815 that committees on education were appointed in 
the two houses.5 The next year Archibald D. Mur- 



1. Ibid, I., 217. 

2. Ibid, II., 712-14. 

3. Ibid, I., 32-41. 

4. Ibid, I., 44-47. 

5. It was a joint "Committee on Seminaries of Learning," 

composed of Frederick Nash, of Orange, and Sim- 
mons J. Baker, of Martin, from the House, and James 
McKay, of Bladen, from the Senate. House and 
Senate Journals of 1815. 



14 Ante-Bellum Builders 

phey, cliaii-maii of the Senate Committee on Educa- 
tion, .submitted a report on the subject, but the only 
action taken was the appointment of a second com- 
mittee "to digest a system of public instruction" to 
be submitted to the next Legishiture. In 1817 came 
Murphey's famous plan for a system of public 
schools, and at the same session the plan of John M. 
Walker for the training of teacliers; but both were 
thrust aside without consideration. From 1817 to 
1825 numerous bills for providing for the establish- 
ment of schools were introduced and promptly buried 
in the dark pigeon-holes in the archives of the Legis- 
lature.i 

Tlie first substantial victory for education was 
won in 1825, wlien Charles A. Hill, of Franklin coun- 
ty, introduced and secured the passage of a bill to 
set aside certain funds of the State as a permanent 
school fund, to be called the Literary Fund, the pro- 
ceeds of which were to be used for the maintenance 
of public schools. This fund was to be managed by a 
board composed of the governor, the speakers of the 
two houses of the ( Jeneral Assembly, the State treas- 
urer and the chief justice, who were officially known 
as ''The I'resident and Directors of the Literary 
Fund," but were popularly called the Literary 
Board.^ After the passage of this bill the Legisla- 
ture resled from its labors, and ten unfruitful years 
followed, during wliich the proceeds of the Literary 
Fund, instead of being used for schools were taken 



1. These reports, bills and committees are all published in 

Coon: Public Education in North Carolina, 1790-1840. 

2. Coon: Pub. Ed. in N. C, I., 279-82. 



OF North Carolina 15 

by the Legislature for other piirposes.i In 1836 Con- 
gress distributed to the Staies the surplus revenues 
in the United States treasury, a large sum of which 
North Carolina received, nearly 11,500,000. Some- 
thing more than |1,000,000 of this sum was turned 
over to the Literary Board, and the Literary Fund, 
now amounting to more than |2,000,000 was at last 
large enough to yield a fair income for schools. In 
1839, therefore, the Legislature passed an act divid- 
ing the counties into school districts and providing 
for holding an election in each district on the ques- 
tion of "schools" or ''no schools."^ The friends of 
schools immediately began an active campaign which 
resulted in a victory in all but seven counties.^ 

"Thus," as Mr. Charles L. Coon has so forcibly 
said, "the long agitation was ended. In some form 
or other North Carolina has maintained public 
schools during all the time since 1840, except a few 
years immediately following the (Mvil War. . . . 
While the school law of 1839 was not a satisfactory 
measure, it marked the beginning of a new era. In- 
dividualism was now gradually to give way to com- 
munity spirit; selfishness and intolerance which de- 
sired only to be undisturbed must now needs give 
place to measures devoted to the welfare and ujdift 
of all the i)eo}»le; hatred of taxation for schools must 
now begin to disap[)ear before the dawning of that 
wiser policy that no taxation is oppressive which is 



1. Extracts from the Minutes and Reports of the Literary 

Board are printed in Coon, Pub. Ed. in N. C, I., 345 
et seq. 

2. For proceedings of the General Assembly on this meas- 

ure see Coon: Pub. Ed. in N. C, II., 818 et seq. 

3. Coon: Pub. Ed. in N. C, II., 910-12. 



16 Ante-Bkllum Builders 

used for giviug equal educational opportunities to 
all."i 

Closely allied with the educational problem of this 
period, was the problem of internal improvements. 
The opponents of public schools argued with great 
effect that the population of the State was too sparse 
and her wealth too snuill to support successfully a 
system of public schools. There was, of course, much 
force in this argument, but the advocates of schools 
met it very effectually by rej)lying that it was this 
^cry policy that had kei»t the ])Opu]ation sparse by 
discouraging immigration and by forcing thousands 
of native North Carolinians to seek in other regions 
opi»ortunities denied them at home ; that it had kept 
the State poor by checking improvements in agricul- 
ture, by prohibiting the establishment of manufac- 
tures, and by preventing the development of com- 
merce. Thus these two questions, schools and inter- 
nal improvements, were intimately linked together 
in the legislative program of the progressive men of 
that epoch who saw clearly enough that they would 
fall or triumph together. 

The problem of internal improvements was largely 
a problem of transportation. It was useless for 
farmers to produce more than they needed for their 
own consumption unless they could transport their 
surplus to market. It was impracticable to establish 
manufacturing enterjirises unless the products of the 
factory could be distributed to the consumers. It 
was impossible to develop commerce without facili- 
ties for trade. Thus the whole question settled itself 

1. Pub. Ed. in N. C, Editor's Introduction I., XLVI. 



OF North Carolina 17 

into a question of transportntion, and at that day 
but two means of transportation were knowu — by 
wagons over public roads and by water. 

To carry on any considerable commerce over the 
public roads of that day was an impossibility. No 
improvement in road-building, or in the upkeep of 
roads had been made since colonial times, and the 
public roads of 1840 were as primitive as those of 
1740. During the winter season as a rule they were 
impassable for heavily loaded vehicles, and at all 
times transportation over them was difficult, danger- 
ous and ex])ensive. The immense distances to be cov- 
ered, the difficulties of construction through vast 
stretches of wilderness, the sparsity of population 
along their routes, made the expense of surveying, 
constructing and up-keeping of roads heavier than 
the average community could bear, and the only 
possible hope for the building of a system of public 
highways at all adequate was through the agency of 
the State. 

The same question of expense confronted the State 
in the working out of an adequate system of water 
transportation. There are but four rivers in North 
Carolina capable of any considerable navigation — 
the Roanoke, the Tar, the Neuse, and the Cape Fear. 
Of these only the Cape Fear flows directly into the 
ocean, and at the mouth of that river the inlet was 
too shallow to admit any but the smallest sea-going 
vessels. The inlets through which passage from the 
ocean could be made to the other rivers, could be- 
come important for trade only in connection with 
artificial waterways. The other rivers of the State 
were so shallow and rapid that their usefulness for 



18 Antb-Bellum Builders 

purposes of navigation was very limited. Water 
transportation could be provided for western North 
Carolina, therefore, only through a system of canals. 
But to keep open the inlets of the east, to construct 
and maintain a system of canals for the west, to 
widen and deepen the channels of the rivers of both 
sections, were immensely expensive tasks, far beyond 
the ability of individuals, or even of private corpora- 
tions, and if such a system were ever to be construct- 
ed for North Carolina, it was evident to all that it 
must be done by the State. 

The friends of internal improvements, therefore, 
looked to the State for the construction of turnpikes, 
the digging of canals, the deepening of rivers and 
harbors, and the opening of inlets, and they urged 
the Legislature to make appropriations for these 
purposes. In 1791 Governor Martin said : ''The inter- 
nal navigation of the State still requires Legislative 
assistance, our sister States are emulous with each 
other in opening their rivers and cutting canals, 
while attempts of this kind are but feebly aided 
among us."i In 1806 Governor Alexander declared : 
"The natural situation of the State being unfavor- 
able to commerce, it is of the greatest importance 
that liberal provision should be made for the inter- 
nal improvements, particularly for the establishment 
of good public roads, and the extension of our inland 
navigation."^ Other governors made similar recom- 
mendations which were disregarded ; friends of inter- 
nal improvements presented memorials and petitions 
which were unheeded ; senators and representatives 



1. Journal of House of Commons, 1791-92, 4. 

2. House Journal of 1806, 5. 



OF NouTH Carolina 19 

introduced bills which were promptly rejected, and 
the history of the agitation for schools was re-enact- 
ed. Public roads remained impassable, canals uncut, 
rivers unnavigable, and inlets unopened. The waters 
of our streams continued to flow on to the sea un- 
hampered by mills and factories, agriculture re- 
mained at a standstill, commerce languished, and 
our towns remained villages while the tide of emigra- 
tion flowed steadily from North Carolina into the 
vast unoccupied regions of the new Northwest and 
the new Southwest. 

Perhaps there are among you some who think my 
picture too sombre. In 1815 a committee of the 
State Senate declared in its report that ''agriculture 
is at a standstill, . . . and whilst the people, whom 
we have sent to work the soil of other states and 
territories have raised the price of their lands from 
two to fourfold, the price of ours has remained sta- 
tionary. "^ Fifteen years passed, and conditions 
seem to have become steadily worse. Remonstrating 
with the Legislature for its indifference to schools 
and internal improvements. Governor Owen, in 1830, 
declared that it was time ''to raise a protesting voice 
against a species of economy which has so long kept 
the poor in ignorance and the State in poverty."^ In 
1885, Governor Swain called attention to the fact 
that "there is not a single work of internal improve- 
ment in progress, and no fund that deserves the 
name provided for the future development of our re- 
sources," and declared that "it ceases to be a matter 
of surprise that even our younger sisters . . , should 



1. Senate Journal of 1815, 22. 

2. Pub. Ed. in N. C, I., 459. 



20 Ante-Bellum Builders 

outstrip us in the generous contest for physical and 
intellectual improvement."^ The next year the citi- 
zens of Fayetteville, in a memorial to the Legisla- 
ture, said "they have year after year witnessed with 
pain and mortification the depressed condition which 
each section of our State presents, when compared 
with that of her sisters of our happy Union, that 
while happiness, contentment and prosperity are 
manifest throughout their borders discontent, decay 
and ruin are strongly delineated within our own."^ 
Governor Dudley said in his inaugural address be- 
fore the Legislature, January 1, 1837 : "As a State, 
we stand fifth in population, first in climate, equal in 
soils, minerals and ores, with superior advantages 
for manufacturing and with a hardy, industrious 
and economical people. Yet, with such unequalled 
natural facilities, we are actually least in the scale 
of relative wealth and enterprise, and our condition 
daily becomes worse — lands depressed in price, fal- 
low and deserted — manufacturing advantages unim- 
proved — our stores of mineral wealth undisturbed, 
and our colleges and schools languishing from neg- 
lect."2 

There is ample evidence that these comments on 
conditions in the State were not the pessimistic lam- 
entations of men disappointed in their favorite 
schemes for the salvation of the race, 

A traveller from Weldou to Raleigh, as late as 
1853, records the following experience: "The road 
was as bad as anything, under the name of a road. 



1. Ibid, I., 713. 

2. Ibid, I., 795. 

3. Ibid, I. 803. 



OF North Carolina 21 

can be conceived to be. Whenever the adjoining 
swami)S, fallen trees, stumps, and plantation fences 
would admit of it, the coach was driven, with a great 
deal of dexterity, out of the road. When the wheels 
sunk in the nnid, below the hubs, we were sometimes 
requested to get out and walk. An upset seemed 
every moment inevitable. At length, it came," to the 
great peril of the limbs and necks of the passengers.^ 
In 1842, Governor Morehead, in his message to the 
Legislature, declared : "From personal observations, 
1 have found the roads leading from Raleigh west- 
ward . . . decidedly the worst in the State" ; and he 
further asserted that the cost to the farmer of trans- 
porting his cotton, corn and wheat over these roads 
was so great "that it takes one half [the crop] to 
transport the other to market."^ This observation 
is borne out by the traveller whom I have already 
quoted, who records that a farmer near Raleigh told 
him that "no money was to be got by raising corn, 
and very few farmers here 'made' any more than 
they needed for their own force," because, "it cost too 
much to get it to market."^ It is not surprising that 
under these conditions the State was rapidly being 
drained of her most enterprising citizens. In 1815 a 
committee of the State Senate estimated tlmt during 
the preceding twentj^-flve years more than 200,000 
people had moved from North Carolina into Tennes- 
see, Ohio and Alabama, declaring that "it is mortify- 
ing to witness the fact that thousands of our wealthy 



1. Olmstead, Frederick Law: A Journey in the Seaboard 

Slave States, 1853-1854, I. 348. 

2. House Journal of 1842, 409. 
2. Olmstead: I., 358. 



22 Ante-Bellum Builders 

and respectable citizens are annually moving to the 
West in quest of that wealth which a rich soil and 
commodious navigation never fail to create in a free 
State ; and that thousands of our poorer citizens fol- 
low them, being literally driven away by the prospect 
of poverty."! Twenty years later and the flow of 
population from the State had not abated. ''The tide 
of emigration," wrote Governor Swain, in 1835, "con- 
tinues to flow in a copious and steady current to the 
new States and Territories of the West."^ Guess 
work, do you call it? Unfortunately the observa- 
tions of these men are too well borne out by evidence 
that cannot be impeached. The United States Cen- 
sus of 1840 showed that the population of North 
Carolina was stationary. From 1830 to 1840 thirty- 
two of the sixty-eight counties in the State lost in 
population, while the increase in the State as a whole 
was less than 2.5 per cent. There is no question as 
to what had become of her people. The Census of 
1850 showed that one-third of all the natives of 
North Carolina then residing in the United States 
were living in other states than North Carolina; 
that is to say. North Carolina's indifference to edu- 
cation, neglect of her resources, hatred of taxation, 
and general backwardness in the race for intelligence 
and wealth, had driven from her borders more than 
400,000 of her strongest, most vigorous sons and 
daughters who had gone to build up the great states 
of the Middlewest and of the Southwest. 

The explanation of the backwardness of North 
Carolina during this first half-century of her career 



1. Senate Journal, 22. 

2. House Journal, 99. 



OF Noirrn Cakoi-ina 23 

as an indopendoiit Slate is to be found chiefly in the 
political conditions of that period. North Carolina 
entered upon her career of independence handicap- 
ped by a Constitution that i)laced in control of her 
destinies the least i)rogressive section of the State 
and the most conservative element of her pojjulation. 
So long as all her energies were consumed with the 
struggle for independence no efforts could be made 
to develop the resources of the State; but as soon as 
independence was secured, a stable government or- 
ganized, and peace assured, progressive men, as we 
have seen, began to bring forward schemes for the 
material, intellectual and social develoi)ment of the 
State, when to their consternation they found them- 
selves blocked in every i)articuhir by the undemocrat- 
ic features of the Constitution. To understand the 
difficulties they had to encounter and overcome it is 
essential that Ave should understand some of these 
undemocratic features of the government. 

The government established under the Constitu- 
tion of 1776 while a representative democracy in 
form was an oligarchy in fact and in ju'actice. In 
fixing the basis of representation in the General As- 
sembly, the Constitution paid no attention to popu- 
lation, that fundamental principle in all democra- 
cies, but gave every county, regardless of its size, 
wealth, or population, two members of the House of 
Commons and one member of the State Senate. In 
1790, for instance, Brunswick county with only 3,000 
people sent the same number of representatives to 
the Legislature, had the same voice in making the 
laws of the State, and cast the same vote for gover- 
nor and other State officials as Rowan county which 
had five times as many people. Even more undemo- 



24 Ante-Bellum Builders 

cratic than this were the limitations placed on suf- 
frage and office-holding. No man could vote for a 
State senator unless he owned as much as fifty acres 
of land; or be a member of the House of Commons 
unless he owned as much as one hundred acres, or of 
the State Senate unless he owned as much as three 
hundred acres; and no person could be governor un- 
less he owned land worth above £1000 — a sum equal 
to ten times that amount in our own day. Moreover 
the people had no voice in the selection of their State 
officials. The governor, the councillors of State, and 
other executive officials, and the judges were all 
chosen by the General Assembly. Thus onlj' land- 
owners could vote for the highest officers of the 
State, only landowners could participate in making- 
laws, only landowners could hold the great executive 
offices. The government was absolutely under con- 
trol of a small majority of the people, composed of 
the landed, slave-holding aristocracy of the East. 

Undemocratic as this government was in form it 
was even more so in spirit. Inasmuch as all State 
officials were elected by the Legislature, and the 
Legislature was controlled by the landed aristocracy, 
property not men controlled the government. The 
two most important kinds of property in the State 
at that time were land and slaves. The class which 
owned this property was ultra conservative. Living 
on their large plantations, supported by the labor of 
their slaves, satisfied with their easy, patriarchal ex- 
istence, these aristocratic planters assumed a patron- 
izing attitude toward the great mass of those whom 
they were pleased to call the "common people," en- 
couraged these "common people" to depend upon 
their bounty for everything above the absolute neces- 



OF NonxH Carolina 25 

sitics of life, and strenuously opposed p;ranting to 
lliem more political ])0wer, or lending the assistance 
of the State to the improvement of their material, 
intellectual and social conditions. The })lanter was 
amply able to employ governesses and private tutors 
for his own children, to send his own sons to the 
State Universitv, and he could see no good reason 
why he should be required to pay taxes to educate 
the children of his poorer neighbors. The stronghold 
of the planter was in the East. There cotton was 
king, and so long as the broad deep rivei-s of tiiat sec- 
tion afforded this tyrant an outlet to the markets of 
the world, he concerned himself but little with the 
welfare of the rest of the State. The planters of 
that section saw no good reason why they, blessed 
with superior natural advantages for trade, should 
burden themselves with the expense of building roads 
and digging canals that would bring the produce of 
other sections into competition with their own. 

Schools and internal improvements were simply 
euphemisms for taxation. Taxation was an evil. 
Therefore schools and internal improvements were 
evils and must be avoided. So ran the planter's logic, 
and so long as he and his class retained control of 
the State government this logic was rigidly applied 
to jmblic affairs. In 1790 the total annual expendi- 
tures of the State government were only |4 1,000, and 
fifty years later they had not more than doubled. 
Thus schools and internal impi'ovements were sacri- 
ficed to the planter's hatred of taxation, while the 
people remained ignorant and poor. 

In the western i)art of the State, conditions were 
very different. The great body of the people of that 
section were small farmers, who for the most part 



26 Ante-Bellum Builders 

tilled the soil themselves unaided by slave labor. 
Cotton played a comparatively insignificant part in 
their economic system. Their rivers and streams 
were shallow, narrow and rapid, better fitted for 
manufacturing than for navigation. But successful 
manufacturing enterprises were out of the question 
so long as there were no facilities for transporting 
manufactured products to market. The building of 
good roads, the construction of public turnpikes, the 
digging of canals, and, a few years later, the con- 
struction of railroads, therefore, became important 
features of the policy of that section. But when the 
West attempted to carry that policy into execution 
it found itself blocked by the interests of the East, 
For reasons, too, which I pointed out two years ago 
in my lecture on the Scotch-Irish, the social life of 
the West was more democratic than that of the East. 
Out of this democratic social system arose the first 
demand for a system of public schools in North Caro- 
lina. But here again the West found itself thwarted 
by the East which held secure in its own hands the 
reigns of government. The West accordingly came 
to the conclusion that before it could carry out its 
program of internal improvements and public 
schools, it must first wage and win a contest for 
political reform. 

When the western leaders came to study political 
conditions they developed a rather remarkable situa- 
tion. In 1776, when the Constitution was adopted, 
the East contained a majority both of the counties 
and of the population of the State. Consequently 
the inconsistency of the provision relative to repre- 
sentation in the General Assembly was not clearly 
understood. But after the Revolution the West grew 



OF North Carolina 27 

much more rapidly in population than the East. In 
1790, when (he first Federal Census was taken, 62 
per eent. of the peojjle of North Carolina lived east 
of (he western boundary of \Vake connly ; fifty years 
later only 4J).5 per eent. lived east of that line. In 
other words while the population of tlie Fast had in- 
creased only 5,'} per cent, during this half -century, 
that of the West had increased 150 j)er cent. The 
\\'est naturally expected that as the center of poi)u- 
lation moved westward, and the vast unoccui)ied 
areas of that section tilled up with people, new coun- 
ties, each entitled to three members of the Legisla- 
ture, would be created for their convenience; and 
that the West would ultimately, as it was entitled 
to do, gain control of the State government. But 
the East saw the danger to its supremacy and pre- 
pared to combat it by preventing as far as possible 
the erection of new counties in the West. 

Frequently in order to win success, the West re 
sorted to the expedient of selecting for proposed new 
counties the names of popular eastern leaders in 
the hope of securing the supjjort of their friends and 
admirers in that section. Thus Ashe county was 
named in honor of Samuel Ashe of New Hanover, 
Buncombe in honor of Colonel Edward Buncombe of 
Tyrrell, Cabarrus in honor of Stephen Cabarrus of 
Chowan, Haywood in honor of John Haywood of 
Edgecombe, Iredell in honor of James Iredell of 
Chowan and Macon in honor of Nathaniel Macon of 
Warren. When finally forced to establish new coun- 
ties in the West, the East undertook to off-set them 
by the creation of new counties in the East and thus 
to continue its hold on the government. For in- 
stance, in 1777 Burke county was given to the West, 



28 Ante-Bellum Builders 

but off-set by Camden in the East; in 1779 Lincoln 
was given to the West, but off-set by Jones in the 
East; in 1791 Buncombe was given to the West, but 
off-set by Lenioi- in the Iilast ; in 1799, Ashe was given 
to the West, but off-set by Greene in the East; and 
in 1808 Haywood was given to the West, but off-set 
by Columbus in the East. Sometimes when it was 
impossible to prevent the creation of a new western 
county at a time when the East had no new county 
ready, a movement was immediately started in the 
East which resulted in the erection of a new eastern 
county within the next two or three years. Thus 
Roclvingham created for the West in 178.5 was oft'-set 
by Robeson in the East in 1786. 

The result was that while the population of the 
West soon came to out-number that of the East, yet 
the East retained its control of the State govern- 
ment. Jn 1830, for instance, there were sixty-four 
counties in the State. Thirty-six of these were east 
of Raleigh. These thirty-six countained only forty- 
one per cent, of the voting popuhition of the State, 
yet they sent to the General Assembly fifty-eight per 
cent, of its members. By reason of the property 
qualifications for sutt'rage which the Constitution 
imposed, the voting population of these eastern coun- 
ties was only 8.7 per cent, of the total white popula- 
tion of the State; nevertheless this 8.7 per cent, 
elected a majority of the members of the Legislature 
by whom the laws were enacted, the governor and 
other State officials were chosen, and they controlled 
the State government in all its branches. How fully 
this control was exercised a few illustrations will 
show. Fifty-nine years elapsed from the inaugura- 
tion of Richard Caswell in 1777, the first governor 



OF North Carolina 29 

under the Constitution of 177G, to the retirement of 
Richard Dobbs Si)aight, in 183(;, the hist governor 
leited under that Constitution. During these fifty- 
nine years there were twenty-four governors elected ; 
six of this number were from western counties and 
served a total of fifteen years, eighteen were from 
eastern counties and served a total of forty-four 
years. There were elected during this period 428 
councillors of State; of these, there were twenty-four 
whose residences I have not yet ben able to ascertain. 
Of the other -104 there were 124 western men, and 
280 eastern men. Of the thirty-five other State of- 
ficials chosen by the Legislature during this period, 
ten came from the West, twenty-five from the East. 
In the two Houses of the General Assembly itself 
there were eighteen different speakers of the Senate, 
of whom six were western, and twelve eastern men; 
there were thirty-two speakers of the House of Com- 
mons, of whom twelve were western, twenty eastern 
men. From 1781) to 183(5 the Legislature elected 
thirteen United States Senators, five from the West, 
eight from the East.i 

The West, therefore, finding both its material in- 
terest and its political destiny involved in the tri- 
umph of democratic ideals, early began an agitation 
for amendments to the C()nslituti<m so as to make 
p()]»uIation the basis of representation in the General 
Assembly, to give to the people directly the election 
of their governor, and in other respects to make the 
government democratic in spirit and in practice as 
well as in form. A long and bitter struggle followed, 



1. Connor, R. D. W. (ed) : North Carolina Manual, 1913, 417- 
1022. 



30 Ante-Bellum Builders 

lasting the better part of a half-century, before the 
West achieved its victory. In 1834 the Legislature, 
no longer able to resist the tremendous pressure of 
an aroused public opinion, passed an Act submitting 
to a vote of the people the question of calling a Con- 
vention to amend the Constitution. The election re- 
sulted in a victory for the Convention which met in 
Raleigh June 4, 1835. No abler body of men ever 
assembled in North Carolina, nor did any body of 
men in this State ever have graver or more important 
problems to discuss and solve. As a rule they were 
in sympathy with the progressive program of the 
West, and they adopted amendments to the Consti- 
tution which went a long way toward making the 
State government a real democracy. The most im- 
portant of these amendments made j)opulation the 
basis of re])resentation in the House of Commons, 
and })roperty the basis of representation in the Sen- 
ate, and took the election of governor away from the 
Legislature and gave it to the people. 

The influence of these changes on the i»olitical, in- 
dustrial and educational life of the State can not be 
easily overestimated. They ushered in an era of pro- 
gress that within the next quarter-century raised 
North Carolina from the lowest to the highest rank 
among the slave-holding states of the South in all 
those things that make for the material, intellectual 
and social uplift of the people. To this era belong 
the erection of the ])resent State Capitol, the building 
of the North Carolina Railroad, the Atlantic and 
North Carolina Railroad, the beginning of the W^est- 
ern North Carolina Railroad, the organization of the 
North Carolina Agricultural Society, the erection of 
the first hospital for the insane, the founding of the 



OF North Carolina 31 

State School for the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind, 
the establishment of a system of iinblic schools, the 
expansion of the University fiom a local high school 
with ninety students into a real colk\i;e whose five 
hundred students represented every state from the 
Potomac to the Gulf of Mexico, and many other pro- 
gressive measures (hat lie at the very foundation of 
the present prosperity, honor and glory of the State.^ 
In the four lectures by which this one is to be fol- 
lowed it is my purpose to present to you the careers 
of the men who were chiefly responsible for these 
wonderful changes in the policy of North Carolina ; 
to discuss the statesmanshij) of Archibald D. Mur- 
phey, leader of the long agitation for schools and 
internal improvements; of David L. Swain, to whose 
tact and wdsdom the West chiefly owed its victory of 
1835 ; of Calvin H. Wiley, whose skill as an organizer 
made the public school law of 1830 effective; and of 
John M. Morehead, the architect and builder of the 
great transportation .systems upon which the |»ros- 
l)erity of the State at this day is dependent, and will 
be dependent for all time to come. This is a group 
of constructive statesmen whose statesmanshi]) is an 
instructive subject for study, whose achievements lie 
at the foundations of our social and economic life of 
today, and whose characters are an honor to our 
Commonwealth. 



1. For historical sketches of the State Capitol, the railroads 
mentioned, and the State's charitable and educational 
institutions see North Carolina Manual, 1913, 127-189. 



II 



Archibald DeBow Murphey' 



It was the misfortune of Archibald D. Murphev, 
to whose career I now invite your attention, to liave 
been sent into the world a hundred years before his 
time. His policies rejected by tlie nineteentli cen- 
tury iuive been accepted by tlie twentieth, and his 
dreams of 1814 have become the realities of llJll. 
He is lo be ranked, therefore, not so mucli as one of 
the great builders of the State, but rather as the 
chief among her prophets. His was the voice of one 
crying in the wilderness showing his i)eople the way 
to a material prosperity, an intellectual awakening, 
and a moral greatness which he discerned with un- 
clouded vision, but was himself destined never to see. 
His was the task of enlightening his people as to 
their wonderful o[>portunities, of arousing them 
from the lethargy of their indifference and self-dejire- 
ciation, of inspiring them with confidence in them- 
selves and in their country, of awakening their pride 
and kindling the fires of their ambition. To the ac- 
complishment of this task, it is no exaggeration to 



1. See also Graham, W. A.: Memoir of Archibald D. Mur- 
phey, U. N. C. Magazine, Vol. III. No. 1; reprinted in 
Peele's Lives of Distinguished North Carolinians and 
in Hoyt's Papers of Archibald D. Murphey; Hoyt, W. 
Henry: Archibald D. Murphey, Biographical Hist, of 
N. C, Vol. IV. pp. 340-49. 



OF North Carolina 33 

say that be brought a more thorouj^h comprehension 
of the natural resources of tlie State, a clearer in- 
sight into her possibilities for development, a better 
understanding of her conditions and needs, a bolder 
and more philosophic grasp of the ]»oli(ies necessary 
for her relief, a more abiding confidence in the great- 
ness of her destiny, than any other man of his gener- 
ation. 

Born too late to bear any i)art in the struggle for 
independence, or to have a share in the organization 
of the State government, or to participate in the 
great work of laying the foundation of the Federal 
Union, Murphey was just old enough to remember 
something of those struggles and to know personally 
some of the eminent patriots who participated in 
them. Lamenting the fortune which denied him a 
share in those mighty events, but inspired by his con- 
tact with the great men who wrought them, he was 
fired with an ambition to render service to the State 
that would give his name a place in history along 
with those of Harvey and Harnett, of Caswell and 
Davie, of Johnston and Iredell, and their contem- 
poraries of the preceding generation. The Avork of 
organization had been completed when Murphey 
reached manhood, but the work of development was 
yet to be done, and in this he saw the field in which 
he could serve the State and gratify his ambitions. 

The simple facts of Murphey's life need not detain 
us long. He was born in Caswell county in 1777, 
was prepared for college at David Caldwell's famous 
academy in Guilford county, entered the University 
of North Carolina in 1796, and was graduated with 
the highest distinction in 1799. The next two years 
he served as a member of the faculty of the Univer- 



34 Ante-Belldm Builders 

sity. In 1802 he was admitted to tlie bar, settled at 
Hillsboro, and rose rapidly to a position of leader- 
ship. Among his rivals at the bar were Thomas Ruf- 
fin and Frederick Nash, later chief justices of North 
Carolina ; Willie P. IVIangum and George E. Badger, 
distinguished colleagues of Clay, Calhoun and Web- 
ster in the Senate of the United States; John M. 
Morehead, afterwards governor of North Carolina; 
Francis L. Hawks, in later years renowned as the 
most eloquent orator of his day in the American pul- 
pit, and others no less able and scarcely less eminent. 
From 1812 to 1818, inclusive, Murphey represented 
Orange county in tlie State Senate; and in 1818 was 
elected Judge of the Superior Court. After three 
years of judicial service he resigned in order to re- 
pair his private fortune, once considerable, but now 
threatened with ruin. Failing in these efforts, over- 
whelmed with financial obligations, broken in body 
by illness and in spirit by the harshness of his credi- 
tors, he passed the last dozen years of his life in dis- 
ease and poverty, dying at Hillsboro, February 1, 
1832, "his ambitions unrealized, his labors unappre- 
ciated." 

''In many attributes of a statesman and philoso- 
pher," says Governor Graham, '4ie excelled all his 
contemporaries in the State, and in every depart 
ment of exertion to which his mind was applied he 
had few equals or seconds. As an advocate at the 
bar, a judge on the bench, ... a legislator of compre- 
hensive intelligence, enterprise and patriotism, a 
literary man of classic taste, attainments and style 
in composition, his fame is a source of just pride to 
his friends and country'." Of Murphey as an advo- 
cate, and as a judge. Governor Graham says : 



OF North Carolina 35 

''He had a Quaker-like plainness of aspect, a scrup- 
ulous cleanness and neatness in an equally plain at- 
tire, an habitual politeness, and a subdued simplicity 
of manner which at once won his way to the hearts 
of juries, while no Greek dialectician had a more 
ready and refined ingenuity or was more fertile in 
every resource of forensic gladiatorship. His man- 
ner of speech was never declamatory or in any sense 
boisterous, but in the style of earnest and emphatic 
conversation ; so simple and apparently undesigning 
that he seemed to the jury to be but interpreting 
their thoughts rather than enunciating his own, yet 
with a correctness and elegance of diction which no 
severity of criticism could improve. ... In his office 
as a judge he well sustained his reputation for learn- 
ing and ability which had been so well established at 
the bar, and attracted the admiration of the profes- 
sion and the people by the courtesy, patience, dignity 
and justice, which characterized his administration 
of the law." 

The same qualities of mind, the same manner of 
dealing with men that distinguished Murphey as an 
advocate and as a judge distinguished him also as a 
legislator. He brought to his duties as a legislator 
the same renmrkable powers of elucidation, the same 
persuasive manner of speaking, the same courtesy, 
patience and fairness in his intercourse with his 
associates in the halls of legislation that marked him 
at the bar and on the bench. 

It is with Murphey's career as a legislator that we 
are chiefly concerned. This career embraced six con- 
secutive terms in the State Senate from 1812 to 1818. 
His first political utterance, an open letter addressed 
to the foreman of the Grand Jury of Orange County 



36 Ante-Bellum Builders 

in 1812 annouucing his candidacy, is not without 
significance. Says he : 

"I have no peculiar claims to the public favour 
above others, either upon the score of talents, moral 
worth or public services. ... If violence of party 
spirit be a recommendation, as many seem to think, 
I have nothing to offer upon this score. Having long 
since become convinced of the evil consequences 
flowing from party dissention, it has been my en- 
deavour, as far as my little influence extended, to 
conciliate rather than irritate parties; to think and 
speak charitably of public as well as private charac- 
ters, believing that an enlarged charity is as much 
a virtue in a politician as in a Christian. Hence I 
have not been in the habit of attributing to either 
political party, exclusive virtue or exclusive patriot- 
ism; of believing one was always right and the other 
always wrong. ... To surrender our judgment in 
political matters . . . (is) an act unworthy of the 
high prerogative of a freeman, . . . and although I 
have always belonged to the Republican party, if 
elected to a seat in the Senate, I shall endeavour to 
serve the country and not a party."^ 

These phrases sounded good as campaign material, 
but they are not the significant things about this 
letter. The significant features of the letter can 
not be quoted because they were the omissions, 
not the statements included. Although Murphey 
fully states his attitude toward the national issues 
then agitating the country, with which as a State 
legislator he would have nothing to do; and al- 



1. Hoyt: Papers of Archibald D. Murphey. Hereafter cited 
simply Hoyt. References to volume and page cannot 
be given because the work is still in press. 



OP North Carolina 37 

'i 
though he was soon to conceive and formulate the 
most comprehensive program of state i)olicies ever 
proposed by any individual in our history, never- 
theless in this his p(»litical salutatory, he did not 
so much as pay the respect of a passing refer- 
ence to State policies. The truth is there was 
no surh thing as a State policy in North Carolina 
until Murphey entered public life and focused public 
attention upon his program of internal improve- 
ments and public education; and it is this program 
that gives him his distinctive place in our history 
and justifies Governor Graham's emphatic statement 
that "he inaugurated a new era in the public policy 
of the State." 

Murphey's public career began at the opening of 
our second war with England and just before the 
general world-peace that followed the battle of Wa- 
terloo and the overthrow of Napoleon. For the first 
time in more than a generation the nations of the 
world paused in their career of war to enjoy a 
breathing spell of peace, to take an inventory of 
their conditions, and to apply to the works of con- 
struction some of that energy and ability which they 
had been so long devoting to the works of destruc- 
tion. Throughout Europe and America there fol- 
lowed an outburst of industrial activity which re- 
sulted, during the next half-century, in "a greater 
advance in all the useful arts and diffusion of the 
comforts of life among mankind than in any five pre- 
ceding centuries." The enthusiasm which the unex- 
pected success of American arms in the war against 
England had aroused in this country, as Murphey 
wrote, "gave admittance to liberal ideas," and sev- 
eral nf the states promptly took advantage of the op- 



38 Antb-Bbllum Builders 

portunity to initiate systems of internal improve- 
ments and general industrial activities. Fully ap- 
preciating the conditions throughout the world and 
eager that North Carolina should share in the gen- 
eral forward movement incident to universal peace, 
Murphey, as Governor Graham says, "applied all 
the energies of his intrepid and well furnished mind 
to the task of devising how his native State should 
most profit in this universal calm, confer the great- 
est good on the greatest number of her people, and 
resume her proper rank in the Union of which she 
was a member." 

As a member of the State Senate he conceived 
those policies and made those wonderful reports that 
entitle him to first place among the North Carolina 
statesmen of his generation. Says Governor Gra- 
ham: "He inaugurated a new era in the public 
policy of the State and for many years exerted a 
greater influence in her counsels than any other citi- 
zen. . . . Whether these [his] measures failed from 
error in their conception or timidity in his contem- 
poraries to meet and boldly sustain them, the his- 
torian must pronounce that his reports and other 
writings in regard to them are the noblest monu- 
ments of philosophic statesmanship to be found in 
our public archives since the days of the Re, olution." 
There is no exaggeration in this statement, and I am 
almost tempted to say that they are as true in 1914 
as they were in 18G0 when they were written. Mur- 
phey's policies were set forth with wonderful grasp 
of his subjects and in marvelous detail, in his several 
reports as Chairman of the Committee on Inland 
Navigation in the Senate and as Chairman of the 
State Board of Internal Improvements; in his Me- 



OF North Carolima 89 

moir of 1819 on Internal Improvements; and in his 
still more wonderful reports of ISIO and 1817 on edu- 
cation. The mainspring of his statesmanship is to 
be found in the following sentence from his Report 
of 1810 on Inland Navigation : 

"The true foundations of national prosperity and 
national glory, must be laid in a liberal system of 
Internal Improvements and of Public Education; in 
a system which shall give encouragement to the cul- 
tivation of the soil; which shall give force to the 
faculties of the mind, and establish over the heart 
the empire of a sound morality ."^ 

Murphey first brought forward his program of in- 
ternal improvements as a comprehensive project of 
State activity in the Legislature of 1815. The Gover- 
nor in his annual message called attention, though 
in a brief and timid way, to the importance of the 
subject, and Murphey, taking advantage of the open- 
ing thus offered, promptly offered and secured the 
adoption of a resolution, "That it is expedient to pro- 
vide more efficiently for the improvement of the in- 
land navigation of the State; and that it be referred 
to a joint select committee of both houses to report 
upon this subject." Murphey was made chairman 
of the committee. His enthusiasm, his knowledge 
of the subject, his facility for expressing his ideas in 
lucid and forceful style, made him easily its master- 
spirit. The report which he wrote and the committee 
adopted projected the subject into the political con- 
sciousness of the State as a living issue. In this re- 
port he declared : 

"The time has come when it behooves the Legisla- 



1. Hoyt. See also Journals of the Legislature of 1816. 



40 Ante-Bellum Builders 

ture of North Carolina to provide efficiently for the 
improvement of the inland navigation of the State. 
To delay this provision, is to postpone that national 
vrealth, respectability and importance which follow 
only in the train of great internal improvements. . . , 
At this day, ... no doubt can be entertained as to 
the great importance of directing both the wealth 
and attention of the government to objects of inter- 
nal improvement. It is real economy to expend the 
public money upon these objects. The blessings of 
the government are thereby brought home to every 
man's door — the comforts, the conveniences of life 
are thereby increased — the public labor is rewarded, 
and the wealth of the State keeps pace with the 
wealth of its citizens. It is time for North Carolina 
to enter upon this career of prosperity — to take effec- 
tual steps to develop her territorial resources, and 
to enlarge them by all means which the science of 
political economy points out. . . . 

'^Your committee can see no reason w^hy this great 
work should be any longer delayed: it is a duty 
which the members of the Legislature owe to the 
State, to themselves, their children, and to future 
generations, to delay it no longer. Upon this subject 
let party spirit be hushed into silence; and uniting 
together into one feeling for North Carolina, let us 
all aspire to the honor of laying the foundations of 
her glory and her prosperity."^ 

This report was the foundation upon which he 
afterwards built his program of internal improve- 
ments, which during the next half-dozen years he 
worked out to the minutest detail. 

1. Hoyt. Journal of 1815. 



OP North Carolina 41 

Three grand objects he had in view. These were: 
to stop the flow of poi)uhition away from North 
Carolina; to increase the wealth of the State; and 
to free her from her economic dependence on Vir- 
ginia and South Carolina. 

Writing of the first of these three objects in his 
report of 1815, he said: 

"\Yith an extent of territory sufficient to maintain 
more than ten millions of inhabitants, . . . we can 
only boast of a i)opulation something less than six 
hundred thousand; and it is but too obvious that 
this population, under the present state of things, 
already approaches its maximum. Within twenty- 
five years past, more than two hundred thousand of 
our inhabitants have removed to the waters of the 
Ohio, Tennessee, and Mobile; and it is mortifying to 
witness the fact that thousands of our wealthy and 
respectable citizens are annually moving to the west 
in quest of that wealth which a rich soil and com- 
modious navigation never fail to create in a free 
State ; and that thousands of our poorer citizens fol- 
low them being literally driven away by the prospect 
of poverty If we take into view the in- 
ducements which those improvements would hold 
out to our citizens to remain amongst us, we might 
well calculate, that at the end of twenty years from 
this time, our population would amount to 1,500,- 
000." 

The accuracy of this calculation is remarkable. 
In 1850, the first year in which the United States 
Census Report took note of interstate migrations, 
thirty-one per cent, of the natives of North Carolina 
then resident in the United States were living in 
other states; that is to say, if North Carolina had 



42 Antb-Bbllum Builders 

been able, as Murphey wished her to do, to retain 
within her own borders, those of her sons and daugh- 
ters who had gone to other regions, they with their 
children, would have given her a population of more 
than one and a half millions. 

Of the increase in the wealth of the State, the 
second result that he anticipated from his policies, 
Murphey said : 

"It would certainly not be improper to say, that 
within five years after this improvement shall have 
been made, the value of all the lands in the State wi'l 
be doubled, and the productions of our agriculture 
increased threefold. Taking the value of our land 
at 153,500,519, (the amount of the late assessment 
under the act of Congress), at the end of those five 
years we might safely estimate the value at |107,- 
000,000. And taking the annual jaroductions of our 
agriculture at |30,000,000, which is certainly below 
the present amount, at the end of those five years, 
we might estimate their value at |00,000,000. la 
this estimate of national prosperity should also be 
considered the comforts and conveniences of life 
which would be brought to the door of each of our 
citizens, the steady habits of industry which would 
be established, and the consequent morality which 
would follow those habits. And not the least of all, 
we should notice the abundant revenue which wouUi 
accrue to the State, thereby affording to the Legis- 
lature the means, not only of lessening the public 
burdens, but of providing effectually for the estab- 
lishment of schools in every section of the State, and 
of making ample provisions for the cultivation )f 
the sciences and arts." 

Murphey was at all times sensitive for the honor, 



OF North Carolina 43 

the dignity and the independence of the State, and he 
spoke out vigorously on more than one occasion 
about her loss of prestige since the formation of the 
Union. ''It is a mortifying fact," he declared in a 
debate in the Senate of 1815, "that North Carolina 
has no character, no pride as a State. We have hith- 
erto bent the neck to the State of Virginia, and 
marched at her nod in all our political movements." 
Of the economic effects of the lack of markets within 
the State he says : "The annual profits made upon 
our commerce in other states, and which is totally 
lost to North Carolina, is estimated at half a million 
dollars."! To free the State from this dependence, 
both political and economic, was a prime object in 
Murphey's policy. Referring to the growth of mar- 
kets within the State, which he expected to follow 
the development of her trade and agriculture, he 

said : 

"The growth of our commercial towns is of pecu- 
liar importance to the character of the State. Whilst 
we continue to send our products to the markets of 
other states, we shall be destitute of that independ- 
ence of character w^hich it should be the pride of our 
citizens to cherish. One species of independence be- 
gets another: and having hitherto been dependent 
upon Virginia and South Carolina for markets for 
the greatest part of our produce, we have in some 
measure become dependent upon those states for our 
opinions and our prejudices. It is the duty of the 
Legislature to contribute as far as possible to break 
the spell that binds us to this dependence, and so to 
change the political orb of North Carolina that she 

1. Hoyt. 



44 Ante-Bellum Builders 

shall move as a primary and not a secondary state 
in the system of the confederacy." 

Again, returning to the subject, he argues his 
point in these telling words: 

"Is it not an object to create a commercial city? 
Does not this concentration of wealth give activity 
to industry in a thousand forms? Does it not de- 
velop the resources of agriculture, perfect the me- 
chanic arts, elicit the faculties of genius and expand 
the boundaries of science? The State which cannot 
boast of a great city, ever has been and ever will be 
held in disrepute; she will never cherish an exalted 
pride; she will never cherish a generous patriotism. 
Conscious of inferiority, she will submit to a state of 
dependence, and suffer the manly virtues to sleep. 
Thousands of generous souls who could not brook 
this consciousness of inferiority, have already desert- 
ed our soil, and thousands more will follow them, if 
we seek not to exalt the character of North Caro- 
lina." 

Prophetic words, these ! Words so similar to those 
which our halls of legishition but recently echoed 
that we might easily enough imagine them to have 
been uttered in the General Assembly of 1913, for 
the failure of North Carolina to execute the plans of 
Archibald D. Murphey in 1815 left it to the men of 
our own day to issue that declaration of economic 
independence of the Virginia cities which we have 
but recently won. 

The leading features of Murphey's program were : 
first, the improvement of means of transportation in 
the State; second, the building up of markets within 
North Carolina by developing commercial centers at 
advantageous points; and third, the drainage of the 



OF North Carolina 46 

swani]>s of tho East and the roclaiiiation of their 
hnids for a<;Ticultiu-al purposes. He proposed to con- 
struct a complete system of inland transportation by 
deepen iiifi' the inlets and sovmds alonj;- the coast, by 
clearing out the channels, building locks and other- 
wise rendering navigable the principal rivers and 
their tributaries; by connecting these rivers into 
three systems by means of canals and good roads; 
and by building turnpikes into those remote parts 
of the State which could not be reached by water 
routes. One system was to be formed by improving 
the Roanoke and its tributaries and giving them an 
outlet through Albemarle Sound; another by con- 
necting the Yadkin and Catawba rivers with the 
("ape Fear with its direct outlet to the ocean; and a 
third by connecting the waters of the Tar and Neuse 
rivers, with an outlet through Ocracoke Inlet. These 
l>laus, he said, had for their objects : "first, the direct- 
ing of the whole trade of North Carolina into three 
channels, each having an outlet in the State, thereby 
securing the growth of our commercial towns; and 
secondly, extending the convenience of inland navi- 
gation to every part of the State, thereby increasing 
the value of lands and encouraging industry and en- 
terprise among all classes in the community."^ 

7t was, as one of Murj)hey's biographers has said, 
a "bold, comprehensive, and well-connected scheme 
of internal imju'ovements, equal in breadth of con- 
ce])tion to the great scheme that De Witt Clinton 
was then launching in New York." And it was "de- 
signed to i)rovide by the best methods then known to 
science, and by the aid of natural advantages for in- 

1. Ibid. 



46 Ante-Bbllum Builders 

land navigation enjoyed by no neighboring State, 
cheap and easy transportation from all sections to 
the best inlets of the sandy barriers which locked out 
the commerce of the world, and to build up a home 
market by the concentration of trade at a few points 
within the limits of the State suited to the growth 
of large cities."^ 

The trouble was that Murphey's plan was too bold, 
too comprehensive. No other man of his day in 
North Carolina had the imagination to conceive a 
scheme so large, or the vision to foresee its results, 
while Murphey himself did not possess the practical 
knowledge of engineering to carry it into execution. 
For this, therefore, he was compelled to rely upon 
others who moved within a narrower intellectual 
range than himself, and his scheme was consequently 
doomed to failure for the lack of agents of sufficient 
foresight and intellectual grasp to transform his 
dreams into realities. Besides this, he had to reckon 
with sectional interests, prejudices and jealousies. 
It was necessary, in order to get anything at all 
done, to conciliate favor by making special appro- 
priations to different sections of the State, and this 
log-rolling method made systematic planning and 
execution impossible. Murphey foresaw this danger, 
as he seems lo have foreseen everything else, and 
warned the Legislature against it, saying in a mem- 
orable passage: 

"No considei-ations of local jwlicy, no paltry con- 
siderations of expense, should divert our views for 
one moment from the destiny to which we are aspir- 
ing, and to which we shall certainly attain, if we 

1. Hoyt: Biog. Hist, of N. C. IV., 340-49. 



OF North Carolina 47 

cease not oiir efforts. Rising above the influence of 
lillle passions, let us devote our labors to the honor 
and glory of the State in which we live, by establish- 
ing and giving effect to a system of i)oli(y which shall 
develo}) her physical resources, draw forth her moral 
and intellectual energies, give facilities to her indus- 
try, and encouragement to her enterprise. It is only 
by ])ersevering in a systematic course of elevated 
policy that the prosperity of the State can be reared 
up and be made stable. Isolated measures, without 
plan and without system, have never yet made a 
State greaf, nor a i)eople happy. They baffle the 
efforts of honest industry by often giving to them a 
wrong direction ; they disappoint the expectations of 
enterprise by their frequent abort ion. "^ 

But this eloquent appeal fell on deaf ears! 

It must not be supposed, however, that Murphey's 
splendid dreams came to naught. (U-eat results were 
achieved which we can better a])preciate than the 
men of that day. Numerous navigation companies, 
in which the State took stock, were chartered, a fund 
for internal improvements was established, a State 
board of commissioners of internal improvements 
created, engineers employed, numerous surveys made, 
and a vast amount of valuable data was collected of 
the greatest usefulness to the State. This last, in- 
deed, was one of the chief objects Murphey had in 
view. Said he : 

*'It is mortifying to look around and witness the 
general ignorance which prevails of the resources 
and character of the State ; to see, both in the Legis- 
lature and out of it, men of respectable understand- 

1. Hoyt. 



48 Ante-Bellum Builders 

ing, almost totally ignorant of our geographical situ- 
ation, of the state of our population, our finances, 
our agriculture, our commerce, our soil and our cli- 
mate," and to enlighten this ignorance he proposed 
to impose upon the Commissioners of Internal Im- 
provements "the duties of collecting information for 
the use of the Legislature upon the climate, the soil, 
the agriculture, the productions and the manufac- 
tures of the State ; and as far as may be convenient, 
of each county therein ; and from time to time to sub- 
mit to the Legislature regular series of statistical 

tables upon these subjects At this time we 

are destitute of regular statistical information ; and 
your committee deem it an object worthy of atten- 
tion to employ intelligent men to collect and arrange 
such information for the use of the Legislature."^ 

One of the ultimate results of the work done in 
accordance with this suggestion was the creation of 
the State Geological Survey. 

Governor Graham, an unusually careful and pains- 
taking man, estimated that the |50,000 expended by 
the State on iVIurphey's schemes for internal improve- 
ments, "was rei)aid tenfold in the topographical and 
statistical information which it elicited and caused 
to be published, and in the loyal and true North Car- 
olina patriotism aroused by Mr. Murphey's discus- 
sion of the subject in the hearts of her people." 

Intimately connected with Murphey's program of 
internal improvements was his program of public 
education. Indeed, as we have seen, one of his ob- 
jects in advocating internal improvements was to 
increase the revenues of the State so as to enable her 

1. Ibid. 



OF North Carolina 49 

to support a system of public education and advance 
the arts and sciences in North Carolina. ''That peo- 
ple," he said, "who cultivate the sciences and the arts 
with most success, acquire a most enviable superior- 
ity over others. learned men by their discoveries 
and works give a lasting splendor to national char- 
acter; and such is the enthusiasm of man, that there 
is not an individual, however humble in life his lot 
may be, who does not feel proud to belong to a coun- 
try honored with great men and magnificent institu- 
tions."! 

Murphey's interest in this subject was sharpened 
by, if it did not originate in his personal difficulties 
in obtaining an education in North Carolina. These 
difficulties he described with great vividness in a 
memorable passage in his oration at the University 
in 1827.2 After graphic descriptions of the great 
lawyers and orators of North Carolina — Davie, 
Moore, Duffy, Haywood and Stanly— he says : 

''Few of the men whom I have named had the ad- 
vantage of a liberal education; they rose to eminence 
by the force of their genius and a diligent application 
to their studies. The number of our literary men 
has been small, compared with our population; but 
this is not a matter of surprise, when we look to the 
condition of the State since the close of the Revolu- 
tionary war. When the war ended, the i)eople were 
in poverty, society in disorder, morals and manners 
almost prostrate. Order was to be restored to society 
and energy to the laws, before industry could repair 



1. Report of 1817. Coon: Pub. Ed. in N. C, I., 123-46. 

2. Hoyt. Also printed in Peele's Lives of Distinguished 

North Carolinians, 128-47. 



50 Ante-Fellum Builders 

the fortunes of the people ; schools were to be estab- 
lished for the education of youth, and congregations 
formed for preaching the gospel, before the public 
morals could be amended. Time was required to ef- 
fect these objects ; and the most important of them, 
the education of youth, was the longest neglected. 
Before this University went into operation, in 1795, 
there were not more than three schools in the State, 
in which the rudiments of a classical education could 
be acquired. The most prominent and useful of these 
schools was kei)t by Dr. David Caldwell, of Guilford 
county. He instituted it shortly after the close of 
the war, and continued it for more than thirty' years. 
The usefulness of Dr. Caldwell to the literature of 
North Carolina will never be sufficiently appreci- 
ated ; but the opportunities of instruction in his 
schools were very limited. There was no library at- 
tached to it ; . . . the students had no books on his- 
tory or miscellaneous literature. There were indeed 
very few in the State, except in the libraries of law- 
yers who lived in the commercial towns. I well re- 
member, that after completing my course of studies 
under Dr. Caldwell, I spent nearly two years with- 
out finding any books to read, except some old works 
on theological subjects. At length, I accidentally 
met with Voltaire's history of Charles the twelfth of 
Sweden, an odd volume of Smollett's Roderic Ran- 
dom, and an abridgement of Don Quixote. These 
books gave me a taste for reading, which I had no 
opportunity of gratifying until I became a student in 
this University in the year 1796. Few of Dr. Cald- 
well's students had better opportunities of getting 
books than myself ; and with these slender opportuni- 



OF North Carolina 51 

ties of instruction, it is not surprising that so few 
became eminent in tlie liberal professions." 

Murphey's educational program was set forth in 
two reports to the General Assembly, one in 1816, 
the other in 1817, and in a bill introduced in the Sen- 
ate of 1817— embracing as Mr. Coon has said, "the 
profoundest and most comprehensive educational 
wisdom ever presented for the consideration of a 
North Carolina legislature."^ Before Murphey's re- 
port of 1816 nobody had ever suggested that the 
State should do more than aid in the education of 
poor children. JNlurphey's object, as he himself said, 
was to "frame a system [of education] which will 
suit the condition of our country and the genius of 
its government; which will develop the faculties of 
the mind and improve the good dispositions of the 
heart; which shall embrace in its views the rich and 
the poor, the dull and the sprightly." Calling atten- 
tion to the failure of the efltorts of private individuals 
and institutions to do this work, Murphey continues : 
Your committee "entertain the fear that no better 
success will hereafter attend them, until a general 
system of public education shall be established and 
enforced by the legislature. This general system 
must include a gradation of schools, regularly sup- 
porting each other, from the one in which the first 
rudiments of education are taught, to that in which 
the highest branches of the sciences are cultivated." 
The subject, however, was one of such magnitude and 
importance, that more time than the committee had 
was necessary to work out the details. Therefore, 



1. Both are printed in Coon: Pub. Ed. in N. C, I. 105-111. 
123-46. 



'52 Ante-Bellum Builders 

Murphey concluded the report of 1816 by offering the 
following resolution : 

"Kesolved, That the Speakers of the two Houses of 
the General Assembly appoint three persons, to di- 
gest a system of Public Instruction, founded upon 
the general principles of the foregoing report, and 
submit the same to the consideration of the next 
General Assembly." 

This resolution was adopted, but strange to say 
no record can be found of the appointment of the 
committee provided for. That such a committee was 
appointed is evident from the fact that in 1817 John 
M. Walker, who had represented Warren county in 
the House of Commons in 1815 and 1816, submitted 
to the House of Commons a report on education ac- 
companied by a letter to the Speaker in which he 
stated that he had been appointed in obedience to a 
joint resolution of the General Assembly at their 
last session, "a Commissioner, in common with two 
other gentlemen to digest a plan of Popular Educa- 
tion. "i But who the other two members were is not 
known. It is scarcely probable that Murphey was 
one of them for if he had been it is certain that his 
enthusiasm on the subject would have compelled a 
meeting of the committee and the preparation of a 
re}»ort to the Legislature. Walker's report of 1817 
was not the report of the committee, for he states 
expressly that "being unable to communicate with 
those Gent'n on the subject," he deemed it his duty 
to submit an individual report. Murphey's famous 
report of 1817 was the report of the Senate Com- 
mittee on Education and does not purport to be 



1. Printed in Coon: Pub. Ed. in N. C, I., 147-64. 



OP North Carolina 53 

the report of the joint committee provided for by liis 
resolution of 1810. 

In his report of 1817 Murphey congratulated the 
Legislature upon ''the arrival of a period, when our 
country, enjoying peace with foreign nations and 
free from domestic inquietude," could now turn her 
attention ''to improving her physical resources and 
the moral and intellectual conditions of her citizens. 
. . . Your committee have entered upon the duties 
assigned to them with a full conviction of their im- 
portance and of the difficulties which attend their 
discharge, . . . and availing themselves of the light 
thrown upon the subject by the wisdom of others, 
they have prepared a system of Public Instruction 
for N. Carolina which with much deference they 
beg leave to submit to the consideration of the Gen- 
eral Assembly." 

Murphey's plan contemplated a complete system 
of public education. Each county was to be divided 
into townships with primary schools in each. Above 
these there were to be ten districts in each of which 
was to be an academy or high school ; and above the 
high schools, the University — exactly the plan, with 
variations in details only, which we are now working 
out in North Carolina. There was also to be a school 
for the Deaf and Dumb. These schools were to be 
supported partly by local and partly by State funds. 
The plan proposed to create a school fund out of 
certain specified funds of the State from the income 
of which the State was to contribute her part to the 
support of the schools. The management of this 
fund was to be placed under a board of commission- 
ers, with the Governor at their head, corresponding 
to our present State Board of Education. This board 



54 Ante-Bellum Builders 

was to have power to locate schools, fix teachers' 
qualifications and salaries, appoint school commit- 
teemen, prepare plans for the promotion of students 
from the primary to the secondary schools, and to 
exercise a general supervision over the whole system. 
Besides these subjects Murphey discussed in a mas- 
terly way courses of study, methods of instruction, 
discipline and other pedagogical topics, and showed 
himself perfectly familiar with the great work of 
Joseph Lancaster in England and of Pestalozzi in 
Switzerland. 

This report Murphey submitted to the Senate on 
November 29. The next day he wrote to his friend 
Thomas Ruffin, afterwards North Carolina's great 
Chief Justice: "On yesterday I submitted the Re- 
port on Public Education. It has cost me great 
labour since coming to this place [Raleigh], having 
all my ideas to arrange and then write out in rough, 
and lastly to transcribe. I know not how the pi;' 
will be approved. I bequeath this Report to the 
State as the Richest Legacy that I shall ever be able 
to give it."i 

But the bequest was rejected by those for whose 
benefit it was intended; the bill introduced by Mur- 
phey designed to enact his plan into law was smoth- 
ered beneath the weight of legislative indifference; 
and the State waited until its author had been gath- 
ered to his fathers before accepting the rich legacy 
he had left her. How rich this legacy was in prac- 
tical wisdom I have already told you enough, I hope, 
for you to appreciate ; how rich it was in beauty of 
style, profound philosophy, and nobility of sentiment 

1. Hoyt. 



OF North Carolina 55 

a few epigrams — which I cannot resist the tempta- 
tion to quote — will show. Says he:^ 

"Knowledge . . . lights up the path of duty, unfolds 
the reasons of obedience, and points out to man the 
purposes of his existence." 

"There is a gentleness in wisdom, which softens 
the angry passions of the soul, and gives exercise to 
its generous sensibilities." 

"True wisdom teaches men to be good rather than 
great." 

"Genius delights to toil with difficulties; they dis- 
cipline its powers and animate its courage." 

The following passage from his report of 1817 on 
"the new science" of pedagogy ought to be of espe- 
cial interest to the students of a Normal College : 

"The great object of education is intellectual and 
moral improvement; and that mode of instruction 
is to be preferred which best serves to effect this ob- 
ject. That mode is to be found only in a correct 
knowledge of the human mind, its habits, passions, 
and manner of operation. . . . The new science [of 
I'edagogy] has given birth to new methods of in- 
struction ; methods, which being founded upon a cor- 
rect knowledge of the faculties of the mind, have 
eminently facilitated their development. Pestalozzi 
in Switzerland and Joseph Lancaster in England, 
seem to have been most successful in the application 
of new methods to the instruction of children. Their 
methods are different, but each is founded upon a 
profound knowledge of the human mind. The basis 
of each method is, the excitement of the curiosity of 
children; thereby awakening their minds and pre- 

1. Report of 1816. 



56- Ante-Bellum Builders 

paring them to receive instruction. . . . Your com- 
mittee indulge the hope that the Board of Public In- 
struction, and the professors and teachers in these 
resj)ective institutions [of the public school system], 
will use their best endeavors to adopt and enforce 
the best methods of instruction which the present 
state of knowledge will enable them to devise." 

And finally he enforced the obligation of the State 
to provide educational facilities for her children in 
the following fine passage: 

"Providence, in the impartial distribution of its 
favours, whilst it has denied to the poor many of the 
comforts of life, has generally bestowed upon them 
the blessing of intelligent children. Poverty is the 
school of genius; it is a school in which the active 
powers of man are developed and disciplined, and 
in which that moral courage is acquired, which en- 
ables him to toil with difficulties, privations and 
want. From this school generally come forth those 
men who act the principal parts upon the theatre of 
life; men who impress a character upon the age in 
which they live. But it is a School which if left to 
itself runs wild ; vice in all its depraved forms grows 
up in it. The State should take this school under 
her special care, and nurturing the genius which 
there grows in rich luxuriance, give to it an honor- 
able and profitable direction — poor children are the 
peculiar property of the State, and by proper culti- 
vation they will constitute a fund of intellectual and 
moral worth, which will greatly subserve the Public 
Interest." 

Five years after this report was submitted to the 
Senate, Bartlett Yancey, a former student of law 
under Judge Murphey, drafted a bill which resulted 



OP North Carolina 57 

in the creation of the Literary Fund; and in 1830 
when the Legishiture enacted the first public school 
law of North Carolina, it turned for its mmM to 
Murphey's report of 1817. 

One other feature of Murphey's grand plan for the 
forward movement of North Carolina remains to be 
noticed. We have already seen how the self-ignor- 
ance and depreciation, lack of Htate pride and inde- 
pendence of character of North Carolina depressed 
his spirits. In order to enlighten their ignorance, to 
arouse a proper State pride, JVIurphey planned a 
great historical and scientific work on North Caro- 
lina. He had hoped that the knowledge that North 
Carolina had a great history would inspire the men 
of his generation with respect and love for the State, 
would make them feel that to be a Carolinian was 
something to be justly proud of, and would arouse 
in them an ambition to be worthy of their inherit- 
ance. In a letter, dated July 20, 1821, to General 
Joseph Graham, a distinguished survivor of the 
Revolution, he set forth his plans and purposes as 
follows : 

"Your letter to Colonel Conner first suggested to 
me the plan of a work which I will execute if I live. 
It is a work on the history, soil, climate, legislation, 
civil institutions, literature, etc., of this State. Soon 
after reading your letter, I turned my attention to 
the subject in the few hours which I could snatch 
from business, and was surprised to find what 
abundant materials could, with care and diligence, 
be collected — materials which if well disposed would 
furnish matter for one of the most interesting works 
that has been published in this country. We want 
Buch a work. We neither know ourselves nor ai-e we 



58 Ante-Bellum Builders 

known to others. Such a work, well executed, would 
add very much to our standing in the Union, and 
make our State respectable in our own eyes. Amidst 
the cares and anxieties which surround me, I cannot 
cherish a hope, that I could do more than merely 
guide the labors of some man, who would take up 
the work after me, and prosecute it to perfection. I 
love North Carolina, and love her the more because 
so much injustice has been done her. We want pride. 
We want independence. We want magnanimity. 
Knowing nothing of ourselves, we have nothing in 
our history to which we can turn with conscious 
pride. We know nothing of our State, and care 
nothing about it. We want some great stimulus to 
put us all in motion, and induce us to waive little 
jealousies, and combine in one general march to one 
great purpose." 

For this work he gathered a vast amount of ma- 
terial from many different sources, both public and 
private, both within and without the State. He pe- 
titioned the Legislature for aid; he appealed to sur- 
viving leaders of the Revolution and to the families 
of the dead ; and he had the archives of England 
searched and an index of the material found there 
relating to North Carolina made for his use.^ His 
plan, says Governor Graham, ''was more voluminous, 
and embraced a greater variety of topics, than would 
have been preferred by the generality of readers, but 
its very magnitude showed the comprehension of his 
genius and the intrepidity of his mind. Beyond one 
or two chapters on the Indian tribes of the State, he 



1. All of his papers on this subject are printed in Hoyt: 
Papers of Archibald D. Murphey. 



OF North Carolina 59 

appears to have done but little towards its com- 
position, though his collection of materials, directing 
attention to the subject, and rescuing from oblivion 
much that was passing away, rendered the under- 
taking itself a great public benefit. Decayed health 
and a ruined fortune arrested him in mid career, put 
a stop to his favorite enterprise, and clouded with 
poverty and adversity the evening of his days." 

As a lawyer Murphey's success enabled him to ac- 
cumulate a considerable estate; as a business man 
his failure involved him in ruin, sufifering and humil- 
iation. The hard times which prevailed throughout 
the country in the early twenties swept away his 
fortune, and left him heavily in debt. 

It is, of course, impossible for a man to partici- 
pate in the business and political life of his time as 
long and actively as Murphey did without raising 
up enemies. Enemies Murphey made, and these, 
taking full advantage of his misfortune, now 
pounced upon him with intent to hasten his ruin and 
break his spirit. They had him arrested, seized and 
thrown into prison for the crime of owing an honest 
debt — for that barbarous method of punishing mis- 
fortune had not been abolished in North Carolina 
even as late as 1820. Resigning from the Superior 
Court bench, Murphey returned to the practice of 
the law hoping to retrieve his fortune and save from 
ruin the friends who had loaned him money and en- 
dorsed his notes. Had his health remained good, he 
would probably have succeeded, but this failed him 
in the very hour of his need, and though in the few 
years that remained of life he rendered important 
services to the State, nevertheless he never regained 
that buoyancy of spirits, that sanguineness of tern- 



60 Ante-Bbllum Builders 

perament, that confidence of convictions, that had 
previously distinguished him in all his works. As 
he looked back over his career it seemed to him that 
everything on which he had set his heart had failed. 
His program of internal improvements had not been 
carried into execution, his plan for a public school 
system had been rejected, and his great historical 
and scientific work on the State remained unfinished. 
Time, however, has given us a better perspective 
from which to view his career. His dreams of inland 
water-ways, of good roads, of public schools, of the 
collection, preservation and publication of her his- 
torical sources by the State, have all become reali- 
ties, the inspiration of which we trace to his labors. 
Thus his triumph came, not in his own life-time, 
it is true, but it came nevertheless, and we today, 
hailing him as the "Father of Public Education in 
North Carolina," have given to his name that high 
place in the history of the State that his ambition 
coveted. 



Ill 



David Lowry Swain' 



Murphey's experience with his measures for inter- 
nal improvements and public schools, as I pointed 
out in my last two lectures, demonstrated to him 
and to the other progressive leaders of the State the 
necessity of securing political reforms before they 
could indulge any hopes of succeeding in their eco- 
nomic and educational policies. The East with its 
superior advantages for marketing its products did 
not feel the necessity for internal improvements that 
pressed upon the West, while its aristocratic social 
life, growing out of the plantation system and slave 
labor, was antagonistic to the very ideals upon 
which a system of public education must be founded. 
Consequently the Eastern leaders lined up almost 
solidly against Murphey's program, and by reason 
of their control of the State Government as it was 
organized under the Constitution of 1776, they were 
able to block every measure proposed by the West 
for bringing North Carolina in line with the pro- 
gressive States of the Union. Murphey and the other 
Western leaders, therefore, early in the struggle. 



The following sketches should be studied in connection 
with this lecture: — Vance, Z. B. : Memoir of David 
Lowry Swain. Peele's Lives of Distinguished North 
Carolinians, 229-55. Ashe: David Lowry Swain, Biog. 
Hist, of N. C, L, 447-58. 



62 Ante-Bellum Builders 

came to the conclusion that their fundamental prob- 
lem was the problem of political reform. In 181(j, 
the same year in which Murphey first introduced his 
educational i)rogram, he submitted a report on the 
necessity of calling a convention for the purpose of 
amending the Constitution. In this report he said : 
"The principal defect [in the Constitution] is the 
inequality of representation in the Legislature," and 
brought forcibly to the attention of the Legislature 
the injustice with which this inequality bore upon 
the majority of the people of the State. " 'That the 
majority should govern','' said he, "is one of the first 
principles of a republican system of government. 
The conditions of the State have so changed since 
the Constitution was adopted that this principle no 
longer operates. The political power now resides in 
a small minority." He proposed, therefore, that an 
election should be held upon the question of calling 
a convention to amend the Constitution in this and 
other important respects. As usual, however, the 
East arrayed itself against this proposition and the 
resolution was defeated.^ 

As the years passed, however, the inequality point- 
ed out by Murphey not only became greater, but oth- 
er questions arose which complicated the situation 
and introduced new elements into it. Two of these 
finally induced enough Eastern men to join in the 
campaign for a convention to assure the triumph of 
the West. These were the election of William Gas- 
ton a judge of the Supreme Court and the burning 
of the State Capitol. A word of explanation is nec- 



1. Senate Journal, 48. 



OF North Carolina 63 

essaiy to i)oint out the bearing of these incidents on 
the Convention question. 

The 32nd Article of the Constitution of 1776 de- 
chired any person ineligible to public office in North 
Carolina "who shall deny the Being of God, or the 
truth of the Protestant Religion, or the divine au- 
thority of either the Old or the New Testament," 
Part of this clause was intended to prevent the elec- 
tion of Roman Catholics to oftice, but the ablest men 
of that day had come to the conclusion that the 
clause was not only out of harmony with the spirit 
of our government and incompatible with the en- 
lightened liberality of the Nineteenth Century, but 
that it was meaningless and, therefore, impossible 
of any reasonable interpretation. Consequently it 
had always been inoperative. In 1833, however, 
William Gaston, a Roman Catholic, was elected a 
judge of the Supreme Court. He maintained with 
unanswerable logic that the 32nd Article did not for- 
bid his acceptance of the office, and with this posi- 
tion the leading members of the legal i)rofession in 
the State agreed. Gaston felt, however, that the 
presence of the clause in the Constitution was a re- 
flection upon men of his faith and a relic of Eigh- 
teenth century bigotry that for the honor of the 
State ought to be stricken out. Himself an Eastern 
man, his great ability as a statesman, his national 
reputation as a jurist, his lofty and unimpeachable 
character as a man, and the universal esteem and 
popularity which he had long enjoyed throughout 
the State, were matters of great pride to the people 
of his section ; and after his election to the Supreme 
Court many of them were ready to vote for a conven- 
tion to remove from the Constitution a clause that 



64 Ante-Bellum Builders 

they regarded as a stigma upon their greatest and 
most beloved leader. 

The Capitol was burned in 1831, and immediately 
an agitation was begun to have the seat of govern- 
ment moved from Raleigh to Fayetteville. Raleigh 
was still a country village, the capital of the State in 
name only, and with no prospects of ever becoming 
a real political and commercial center. Many people 
felt that Fayetteville's superior advantages for com- 
merce if combined with the advantages which always 
attend the political capital of a State, would develop 
that town into a real political and commercial center 
which, as we have seen, was one of the prime needs 
of North Carolina. As the removal of the Capitol 
required an amendment to the Constitution the Fay- 
etteville party were now eager to join with the West 
in support of a bill to call a convention. ^ 

1. In 1831 a member of the General Assembly described the 
party divisions in the Legislature in the following 
passage in a private letter: "vVe are distracted — rent 
asunder, by factions and the result of the legislative 
discussions and dissensions will be (I fear) that we 
shall separate in anger, after having proved most un- 
profitable servants. There are five parties here. The 
largest — but it does not quite constitute a majority — 
is for rebuilding the Capitol and is opposed to a Con- 
vention in every form. This may be termed the East- 
em party. The next, in point of magnitude, is the 
Western party — they want a reconstruction of our 
Constitution with respect to political power and want 
no more, but will either keep the government at Ral- 
eigh or remove it to Fayetteville, as the one or the 
other will favor their great end. The third, in point 
of size, is the Fayetteville party; their main object is 
removal — but they are willing, also, to go for a gen- 
eral Convention The two others are of about the 
same magnitude- - the Northwestern and Southwestern 
parties. The former want a modification of the Con- 
stitution, but are utterly opposed to a removal, and 
the latter want a removal, but resist alterations of the 
Constitution." Connor, H. G.: "The Convention of 
1835," North Carolina Booklet, VIII. 2, p. 94. 



OF North Carolina 65 

A third element which had become an important 
one in the situation was the great democratic move- 
ment, world-wide in its sweep, that was then shaking 
the foundations of every English-speaking govern- 
ment of the world. In England this movement found 
expression in the Catholic Emancipation Act, in the 
act abolishing slavery throughout the British Em- 
pire, and in the great Reform Bill of 1832; in Ameri- 
ca it revealed itself in the creation of new States 
with constitutions recognizing population as the 
only basis of representation, in the extension of the 
suffrage in nearly all the old States, in the election 
of Andrew Jackson as President of the United 
States, and in the growth of a strong anti-slavery 
vseutiment in the nation. ^ It was impossible for 
North Carolina long to resist the influence of this 
universal onward sweep of democracy and all that 
was needed to bring the State in line with this pro- 
gressive movement was the appearance of a leader 
with the ability, the tact, and the personal popular- 
ity to unite in one solid phalanx the various forces 
that I have described. 

Out of the West, from beyond the rugged peaks of 
the Blue Ridge, a region since become famous the 
world over for the grandeur of its scenery and the 
purity of its climate, but at that time as unknown to 
the great majority of the people of the State as were 
the Highlands of Scotland, this leader suddenly ap- 
peared. A young man, just passed thirty, his out- 



1. For a fuller discussion of this movement and its influ- 
ence on North Carolina politics see the writer's "His- 
torical Foundations of Democracy in North Carolina," 
Publications of the North Carolina Historical Com- 
mission, Bulletin No. 12. 



66 Ante-Bellum Builders 

ward appearance gave as little promise of leadership 
as it is conceivable for any person to have. De- 
scribed as "a malformation in person, out of propor- 
tion in physical conformation, apparently thrown 
together in haste, and manufactured from the scat- 
tered debris of material that had been used in other 
work; , . . gawky, lanky, with a nasal twang that 
proclaimed him an alien, and a pedal propulsion that 
often awakened derision," he nevertheless was en- 
dowed with such amiability of temperament, intel- 
lectual ability, and nobility of character that he im- 
mediately attained a universal popularity that gave 
him a place of leadership in the affairs of the State 
at a younger age than any other man in our history. 
This man was David Lowry Swain of Buncombe 
county. Born in 1801, he received a meager educa- 
tion in the preparatory schools of the neighborhood, 
and later entered the junior class at the University 
of North Carolina. But for some unknown reason 
he withdrew from college at the end of four months, 
and removed to Raleigh where he studied law under 
Chief Justice Taylor, While in Raleigh he not only 
pursued his legal studies with diligence, but like- 
wise entered upon a course of study that is said to 
appeal rather to the heart than to the head. In 1822 
he finished his studies and, as Governor Vance puts 
it, returned to the mountains "with his license in 
his pocket and a sweetheart in his eye." There he 
went hopefully to work and became almost imme- 
diately in possession of a lucrative practice. Quick 
to perceive his ability and integrity, the people of 
Buncombe county, in 1824, elected him a member of 
the General Assembly in which he served five terms. 
As a legislator he aligned himself with the progres- 



OF North Carolina 67 

sive leaders of his section and gave his snpport to 
measnres designed to establish a system of internal 
improvements, public schools, amendments to the 
Constitution, and other similar forward movements. 
"In his character as a legislator," says Governor 
Vance, ''he was distinguished for his industry and 
his attention to details, especially in the department 
of statistics and taxation, in which he soon became 
the highest authority in the body of which he was a 
member. He was prominent in getting the bill 
passed for the building of the French Broad Turn- 
pike, a measure which revolutionized the intercourse 
between Tennessee, Kentucky, and South Carolina, 
bringing an immense stream of emigration, travel, 
and trade through western North Carolina, and add- 
ing greatly to his own popularity among the people 
of that region. "1 

His popularity, however, was not confined to the 
people of his own section. His association with 
members of the Legislature had made him as uni- 
versally esteemed in the East as in the West. A 
striking illustration of this occurred in 1827. A 
contention springing up between the candidates for 
the position of solicitor of the extreme eastern dis- 
trict, and none of them being willing to give way, 
they finally agreed to withdraw in favor of Swain, 
although his residence was in the extreme western 
part of the State. After a year's service as solicitor 
Swain resigned. In 1830 a contest arose in the 
Legislature over the election of a judge in the Ral- 
eigh district. Henry Seawell, one of the most emi- 



1. Address on Swain in Peele's Lives of Distinguished 
North Carolinians. 



68 Ante-Bellum Builders 

nent lawyers at the Raleigh bar, was the leading 
candidate. His opponents had brought forward 
various candidates in opposition to Seawell but in 
vain. Finally in a last effort, they nominated Swain 
and triumphantly elected him, or as one enthusiastic 
member said : "Then we took up old 'warping bars' 
from Buncombe and warped him out." Thus before 
he had reached his thirtieth birthday Swain had 
served five terms in the Legislature, one term as 
solicitor, and had been elected a judge of the Supe- 
rior Court. After two years of service as a judge, 
at the age of thirty-two he was elected governor, the 
youngest man ever elevated to that high office in the 
history of North Carolina. He was re-elected in 
1833, and again in 1834. The popularity of which 
these facts are evidence was no small factor in 
Swain's success in inducing the Legislature of 1833 
to pass the Convention bill; and of his still greater 
success in inducing the Convention to adopt the 
amendments to the Constitution which the West 
had been so long advocating. 

The policies that Swain advocated as governor en- 
title him to a high place among the progressive gov- 
ernors of North Carolina. His letter-book shows 
that his time and labors were especially given to the 
questions of constitutional reform, the coast defences 
of North Carolina, internal improvements, taxation 
and financial reform, and other important matters 
of domestic concern. In his annual messages to the 
Legislature he discussed these and other problems 
with great ability and force. He struck hard and 
vigorous blows at the old laissez faire policy that 
had so long characterized the legislation of North 
Carolina, and perhaps it is no exaggeration to say 



OP North Carolina 69 

that to his tact and personal popnhirity with men 
of all sections, more than to any other single cause, 
was due the abandonment of that policy during his 
administration. Swain inaugurated no new policy. 
He simply followed in the footsteps of Mui-}>hey. He 
lacked the largeness of vision, the originality of con- 
ception, the poetic imagination that characterized 
Murphey's work; but he had what Murphey did not 
possess, the practical knowledge of men and affairs 
necessary to achieve results, and it was this (piality 
that enabled him to win success where Murphey had 
met with failure. 

From 1776 to 1835 the relations existing between 
the governors and the Legislature were fundamental- 
ly different from what they were prior to the former 
date or have been since the latter. Prior to 1776 th • 
governors were appointed by the Crown and were 
responsible to the Crown only. They were the per- 
sonal representatives of the King and as such felt 
themselves superior to the Legislature; and they 
urged their views of public questions with that vigor 
and emphasis that always attends a feeling of supe- 
riority. Since 1835 the governors have been elected 
by the people to whom alone they are responsible. 
Their election to the highest office in the State is it- 
self an endorsement by the sovereign people of their 
policies, and this fact gives to our governors an 
assurance and feeling of independence which impart 
force and vigor to their messages to the Legislature. 
But from 1776 to 1835 the governors were elected 
annually by the Legislature and were entirely re- 
sponsible to the Legislature. Their attitude, there- 
fore, was generally one of greater subserviency than 
was due to their great office, and on public questions 



70 Ante-Bellum Builders 

they presented their views with such deference and 
lack of emphatic conviction that the average message 
of that period is a rather colorless document. 

Swain's messages were an exception to this gen- 
eral criticism. Always respectful and considerate 
of the opinions of the members of the Legislature 
nevertheless he had his own views on all xjublic is- 
sues, he stated them frankly and without equivoca- 
tion, he brought to their support an array of facts 
and figures that gave them point and emphasis, and 
he presented them in a clear-cut, vigorous style. 

In his first message he pointed out the fact that 
during the preceding half century more than one- 
half the total revenues of the State had gone to de- 
fray the expenses of the Legislature; declared that 
no government could be wisely administered in 
which those who direct the expenditures of the pub- 
lic fund receive more for that service than the 
amount of their disbursements ; and then diplomati- 
cally informed the Legislature that for the past fifty 
years it had not been worth its hire to the State.^ 
"I advert to the circumstance," he said, "principally 
to enable me to urge upon you more forcibly the 
propriety of entering upon a system of legislation 
required by the wants of your constituents, com- 
mensurate with their resources, and worthy the con- 
fidence which they impose in your ability to admin- 
ister their public affairs." The "system of legisla- 
tion" that he then discussed embraced internal im- 
provements, education, banks and currency, the re- 
vision of the laws, and reform in taxation. 

He called attention to the "excitement which 

1. House Journal of 1833, 129-38. 



OP North Carolina 71 

seems to pervade every section of the State upon the 
subject of Internal Improvements. The opinion 
seems to be general that the adoption of a more lib- 
eral system is essential to the future ])rosperity of 
the State." Two methods had bw^i sui^j2;ested : one 
Ihat [ho work should be done by private corporations 
aided by the State; the other that the State alone 
should do it. It was characteristic of Swain's prac- 
tical business sense that he should urge both meth- 
ods. The great channels of trade, he said, "in which 
the whole community is interested, and which for 
that reason will not probably attract and are least 
likely to be efifected by individual enterprise, demand 
the exclusive attention and patronage of the govern- 
ment." But for improvements of a local character 
he recommended the formation of private companies 
to be aided by the State, shrewdly observing: "Indi- 
viduals will rarely be found anxious to engage in a 
chimerical scheme; and no more satisfactory evi- 
dence of the practicability and usefulness of any 
work need be required than the fact that those who 
recommend it to public patronage are willing to 
test the correctness of their opinions by trusting 
their own capital to the same hazard." 

These recommendations, however, came to naught, 
for an event was about to happen, the immense sig- 
nificance of which nobody then understood, that was 
soon to render obsolete all these plans of internal 
improvements. This event was the advent of the 
railroad and steam locomotive which was destined 
to produce changes and results that neither Murphey 
with all his prophetic vision, nor Swain with all his 
practical insight could foresee. It was left for an- 
other great Carolinian in whom were combined both 



72 Antb-Bellum Builders 

Murphey's power of vision and Swain's practical 
genius to lay the foundation of the State's transpor- 
tation system and win first place among the "Ante- 
Bellum Builders of North Carolina." 

Swain put himself squarely before the Legislature 
as favoring public education, but doubted whether 
it was wise at that time to undertake to establish a 
system of schools. The sparseness of population and 
the smallness of the Literary Fund made it prob- 
lematical whether such a system could be success- 
fully launched at that time, and a failure in the first 
attempt would cause a reaction that would be fatal. 
These conditions, however, were temprorary, for as 
he said: 

"When, as the result of a wise and liberal system 
of legislation, the inlets upon our coast shall receive 
the improvement of which they are susceptible; 
when our great natural highways, the rivers connect- 
ed with them, shall assume that condition, in which 
Providence designs they shall be placed by our 
hands; when these channels of communication shall 
be intersected by Railroads and Canals; and as the 
natural consequence of this state of things, agricul- 
ture shall receive her appropriate reward, we will 
have laid the foundation of a school system, as ex- 
tensive as our limits, and as enduring as our pros- 
perity. A few individuals will not have been select- 
ed and cherished as the peculiar objects of public 
patronage; but the general character of the country 
will be elevated, and thousands now too poor to af- 
ford the blessings of education of their children, will 
find this, though the most important, but one of 
many advantages incident to an improved condition 
of life. Extended commercial facilities will stimu- 



OF North Carolina 78 

late to agricultural exertion ; — increased production 
afford the means of education ; and the diffusion of 
knowledge operate as the most certain preventive 
of crime, A more liberal scheme would be better 
suited to the condition of older and richer communi- 
ties, and I trust the day is not very far distant when 
it will be so to ours." 

But Swain was well aware that all these things 
waited upon political reform, and to the accomplish- 
ment of this end he bent his chief energies. The 
great issue of his administration was the calling of 
a convention to amend those provisions of the Con- 
stitution that related to representation. After ex- 
pressing his pleasure at meeting the Legislature of 
1834, he says: 

''That your attention should be mainly directed to 
objects of State Legislation, cannot be doubted. . . . 
I will proceed at once to the most important sub- 
jects which are in my opinion proper for your con- 
sideration. Of these the proposition to amend the 
Constitution of the State, first introduced into the 
General Assembly in 1787, and which has continued 
to command the public attention for nearly half a 
century, is regarded as most prominent. Upon a 
subject of such universal interest, and involving so 
many important considerations, you have a right to 
expect an unreserved communication of the opinions 
of the Executive Department. ... I avail myself of 
the first fair opportunity, which has been afforded 
to me, to present my views of this perplexing but in- 
teresting question."^ He first considered the objec- 

1. House Journal, 131. 



74 Ante-Bellum Builders 

tions that had been urged by the opponents of the 
Convention, and in a few pointed sentences quickly 
disposed of them. There were but two that seem to 
merit serious consideration. They were: First, that 
as the Constitution had made no provision for 
amendments, the Legislature had no power to call a 
Constitutional Convention, but that such power rest- 
ed in the people only; second, that even if the Legis- 
lature had the power to call a convention it did not 
have power to prescribe what amendments the con- 
vention should consider, but that this was a matter 
for the Convention itself to decide. 

Swain discussed these points from the historical, 
the legal, and what one might call the commousense 
points of view. In answer to the argument that the 
Legislature had no power to call a convention, he 
pointed out the fact that twice already, in 1788 and 
in 1789, the Constitution had been amended by con- 
ventions called by the Legislature; and, in the sec- 
ond place, he showed that in both instances the Leg- 
islature had prescribed the amendments which those 
conventions were permitted to consider. "Without 
pursuing this discussion further," he said, "the con- 
clusion may be fairly drawn, that a legislative rec- 
ommendation to the people to select a convention . . . 
is in strict accordance with first principles, and in 
precise conformity to all the precedents afforded by 
our history." 

If then a Convention should be called what were 
the principal objects to be achieved? As stated by 
Swain, "The great object to be attained is a radical 
change in the basis of representation." After dis- 
cussing the origin and history of the plan incorpor- 
ated in the Constitution of 1776, the changes in the 



OF North Carolina 75 

conditions of the State that made amendments of 
that plan advisable, the discontent of the West, the 
controversies between the sections to which it had 
given rise, he says : 

"It is certain that it subjects tlie majority to the 
rule of the minority, and confers on tliose who pay 
comparatively but a small proportion of the public 
expense, the power to control the entire i-esources of 
the country. If the wisdom, patriotism and spirit 
of compromise requisite to the j)ermanent and satis- 
factory adjustment of this controversy, shall be 
found united in the present General Assembly, you 
will achieve a triumph of inestimable importance, 
and entitle yourselves to the lasting gratitude of 
posterity." 

The question thus brought sharply to the attention 
of the Legislature in the ablest message ever present- 
ed on that subject, the other questions with which 
it had now become complicated, and the general dem- 
ocratic movement throughout the world, which I 
have described, overbore the opposition to the more 
conservative elements and enabled the West to win 
the first great victory for constitutional reform in 
North Carolina. A bill was introduced to submit to 
the people at a general election, the question of call- 
ing a convention to amend the Constitution by 
changing the basis of representation, by abolishing 
the right of certain towns to send members to the 
General Assembly, by taking away from the Legis- 
lature the election of the governor and giving it to 
the people, by taking the right of voting away from 
free negroes, and by striking out the sectarian test 
for office-holding. In the House of Commons 13 east- 
ern men joined with the West and passed the bill by 



76 Ante-Bbllum Builders 

a vote of 66 to 62. lu the Senate the contest was 
even closer, the advocates of the Convention winning 
by a vote of 31 to 30. Every senator west of Raleigh, 
except one, voted for the Convention, and they were 
joined by four eastern senators whose courage in op- 
posing the interest of their section enabled the West 
to achieve its great victory. No greater triumph for 
democracy was ever won in North Carolina. For the 
first time in their history the people of the State 
were to be consulted on a great problem of govern- 
ment ; for the first time the decision of a great politi- 
cal issue was referred directly to the people. 

This first referendum resulted in a victory for 
democracy. Some curiously interesting results ap- 
pear in the election returns. For instance there were 
30 eastern counties in each of which less than 100 
votes were cast for the Convention. The total vote 
of those thirty eastern counties was 1004 for the 
Convention, 15,335 against it. On the other hand, 
there were eighteen western counties in each of 
which less than 100 votes were cast against the Con- 
vention. The total vote for the Convention in these 
western counties was 16,916, the total vote against it 
in these western counties was only 602. In Rowan 
county there were two men and in Rutherford coun- 
ty but one who voted against the Convention. The 
total vote for the Convention was 27,550, the total 
against it 21,694.i Thus the people of the State 
after more than fifty years of agitation, in which 
deep passions had been aroused, registered their 
verdict in favor of a convention charged with the 



1. The election returns by counties are printed in North 
Carolina Manual for 1913, 1010-12. 



OF North Carolina 77 

duty of purging their Constitution of its undemo- 
cratic features which it had inherited from colonial 
times. 

The Convention met in Raleigh, June 4, 1835, with 
128 delegates present. The public careers of its 
members are sufficient evidence of their ability and 
experience. Three either had been or were to be- 
come United States senators; three had served the 
State as governors, and two more later became gov- 
ernors; six rendered conspicuous service on the 
bench ; eleven had presided over one or the other 
branch of the General Assembly; fifteen either had 
been or later became members of Congress; and 
eighty-eight had represented their constituents in 
the State Legislature. From Bladen county came 
John Owen, wiio had served three terms as governor; 
from Kowan, Charles Fisher, w^ho had twelve times 
represented his county in the General Assembly, 
where he had long led the western forces in their 
fight for a convention ; Weldon N. Edwards, of War- 
ren, had served twelve years in the Legislature and 
ten 3'ears as the successor of Nathaniel Macon in 
Congress; Daniel M. Barringer, of Cabarrus, after 
long service both in the State Legislature and in the 
National Congress, was later to represent his coun- 
try at the Court of Spain ; John Branch, of Halifax, 
had been distinguished for his services as legislator, 
as governor, as United States senator, and as Secre- 
tary of the Navy in the Cabinet of Andrew Jackson ; 
Henry Sea well, of Wake, John D. Toomer, of Cum- 
berland, and Joseph J. Daniel, of Halifax, were 
eminent as advocates at the bar and judges on the 
bench ; John M. Morehead, of Guilford, had already 



78 Antb-Bbllum Builders 

served his people in the Legislature and was destined 
to greater fame in other fields of activity. 

But the three most conspicuous figures in the Con- 
vention, ujion whom the eyes of the whole State were 
centered, were Nathaniel Macon, of Warren, William 
Gaston, of Craven, and David L. Swain, of Bun- 
combe. Macon had played a great part in the life 
of the State and Nation. Five times elected to the 
Legislature, twelve times to the National Congress, 
three times to the United States Senate, his public 
career covered a period of forty-two years. He had 
been three times chosen speaker of the National 
House of Representatives, and three times President 
of the United States Senate, and had twice been in- 
vited to sit in the cabinet of Thomas Jefferson. At 
the age of seventy he had voluntarily retired from 
public life, and was quietly spending his last days 
on his farm, when he was called by his people to give 
them the benefit of his wisdom in the momentous 
tasks facing the Convention of 1835. Rising above 
all party or sectional prejudices, he was recognized 
by all as the fittest man for president of the Conven- 
tion to which office lie was unanimously elected. He 
was, declared John Randolph, "the best, wisest, and 
purest man I ever knew." 

William (laston, after service in the State Legis- 
lature and in C-ongress, had recently been elevated to 
the Supreme Court. Of him Judge Battle said : 
"Though left an oi'phan in earliest infancy in a 
country where he had no kindred, save a widowed 
mother and an infant sister, though professing a re- 
ligious faith almost proscribed, and attached to a 
political party always in the minority, he yet rose 
to the highest summit of professional distinction, ac- 



OF North Carolina 79 

quired, during a brief career in the Legislature of his 
State, a preponderating influence in its councils, 
was among the foremost of the great in the national 
assembly, was selected by almost general acclama- 
tion to preside in the highest judicial tribunal 
known to our land, and, more than all, won and 
maintained to the day of his death, the confidence, 
the admiration, and the affection of his country- 
men."i Standing with uncovered head by (Jaston's 
tomb, Edward Everett declared with unconcealed 
emotion : "This eminent man had few equals and uo 
superiors.'' 

Swain, then serving his third year as governor, 
was the recognized leader of the western forces. To 
his skilful leadership, his wide and varied learning, 
his mastery of all the facts and figures bearing u})on 
the questions at issue, his fairness towards oppo- 
nents, and his patience and tact in dealing with men, 
the West to a large degree owed its triumph. Though 
generally tactful and diplomatic in his handling of 
delicate situations, he knew when and how to speak 
plainly and forcibly, and could when necessity called 
for it let fall a storm of wrathful indignation at 
wrong and injustice that made m-^n qui'il. Describ- 
ing such an incident during Swain's speech en the 
amendment relating to representation, the late K. 
K. Creecy, who was an ej'e-witness of it, writes : "He 
])resented all the points of the case from the western 
point of view. It was bold, defiant, logical, argu- 
mentative and sometimes eloquent. He was fond of 
Scriptural quotations, and often used them with 



1. Address on Gaston in Peele's Lives of Distinguished 
North Carolinians, 150-160. 



80 Ante-Bellum Builders 

gre.it effect. Once, towering in his wrath and rais- 
ing his index finger as in defiance of Eastern Caro- 
lina, he said : 'Let our eastern brethren beware. If 
they do not grant our peaceful appeal for a change 
in the basis of representation, we will rise like the 
strong man in his unshorn might and pull down the 
pillars of the political temple.' "^ Such a threat 
from a man of Swain's quiet and amiable tempera- 
ment shook the convention to its very foundations. 

Swain was, as a rule, one of the silent members of 
the Convention. He spoke but seldom, and then 
briefly. His chief work was to direct the efforts of 
his supporters, to conciliate malcontents, to compro- 
mise differences on non-essentials, and to keep his 
followers intact on the great point — representation 
in the General Assembly based on population. On 
this question he was as firm as adamant, even threat- 
ening that unless justice were done the western 
counties would throw off their allegiance to the State 
and set up for themselves. The Convention, he said, 
was selected for the express purpose of reforming 
the basis of representation. Minor points might 
have attracted the attention of a few individuals, 
but this was the main point, the great business for 
which they were selected. He declared that he could 
say with perfect sincerity that if he knew his own 
heart, no member of the Convention came to its de- 
liberations with less of party or sectional feeling, or 
was more anxious to terminate forever the differ- 
ences between the two sections of the State than he. 
He hoped that a similar feeling influenced the ma- 
jority of the Convention, for the utmost caution and 

1. Grandfather's Tales of North Carolina History, 131. 



OF North Carolina 61 

circiiiusiKM-tion was necessary to a happy tennina 
lion of their hibors and if passion and prejudice 
wciv [termitted to assume control, incalcuhible in- 
jui*y might result from it. It was their solemn duty, 
therefore, to settle this controversy. As for himself 
he was disposed to conceal nothing-. Every view he 
entertained as to the relative advantages which 
would be derived by each section of the State from 
the i>roiK)sed amendment was at the service of all 
who desired it; and he had no hesitation in stating 
iliat if by anything that this Convention did or left 
un<lone. injustice should be done to anj' large jwrtion 
of (he State, the struggles in which they were involv- 
ed would not terminate with the adjournment of 
(hat bculy. "The general sense of injury,'' he ex- 
claimed, "will impel the people as one man to rend 
asunder the cords which bind the body politic and 
stand forth in their unshorn might and majesty."^ 

This firm stand, coui)led with tact and di])lomacy 
in dealing with the otljer (piestions that came uj). 
resulted in the Convention's agr(»eing to submit t(» 
a vote of the peo{)le amendments to nnike property 
the basis (►f rei»resentation in the Senate, population 
in the House of Commons; to abolish borough repre- 
sentation ; to disfranchise free negroes; to take from 
the Legislature and give to the peojtle the election 
of the governor; to make the governor's term two 
years instead of one year; to substitute in the 32nd 
Article the word "Christian'' for the word "l*rotes- 
tant;" and to fix a definite manner of proposing and 
adopting amendments to the Constitution in the 
future. The election on these jtroposals i-esulted in 



1. Debates in the Convention of 1835,88-91. 



82 Antb-Bellum Builders 

;i vote of 2()J71 for, ;ind 21,606 against them.^ Of 
the 2G,771 votes east for tlie aiiiendiiients, 2o,4JH 
came from tlie counties west of Kaleigh ; and of tlie 
21,00() votes cast against them, 10,279 came from 
counties east of Kaleigh. As in the election calling 
the Convention the rc^turns revealed some interesting 
results. For instance, in the West, 

Burke county cast lo5J) for, 1 against; 

Rutherford cast 1557 for, 2 against; 

Surry cast 1751 for, 4 against; 

Wilkes cast 1757 for, 8 against; 

Haywood cast 484 for, 8 against ; 

and in the East, 

J>iiinswick cas< for, 4(56 against; 

Tyrrell cast 1 for, 450 against; 

Hyde cast 2 for, 481 against; 

('(ilumbus cast 3 for, 391 against; 

llladen cast 6 for, 564 against; 

('howan cast 7 for, 332 against; 

Hertfoi'd cast 7 for, 376 against; 

Pas(iuotank cast 7 for, 442 against; 

Nash cast 8 lor, 757 against; 

(jreene cast 9 for, 423 against. 

These votes show how sharp and irreconcilable had 
been the division between the I wo sections of the 
State. So long as this division remained, it was im- 
l)ossible for N(nth Carolina to undertake any greur 
forward movement for educational, industrial or 
social betteruKuit that lequired the united sup])ori 
of her {)eopl<\ The chief work, therefore, of the Con- 
viMition of 1835 was to remove the cause of this di 



1. The returns are printed in North Carolina Manual. 1913, 
pp. 1010-12. 



OF North Carolina 83 

vergence of interests, and to set in motion a train of 
events that have lii-adually removed sectional issues 
and united tlie jjeople of Nortli Carolina into one 
solid homogeneous whole. Chief among these events, 
as I said in my opening lecture, were the construc- 
tion of the railroads which have united the people 
of the East with those of the West in the bonds of 
trade and social communion ; and the organization 
of the public school system which has given the peo- 
ple of the two sections a common interest that has 
contributed to their intellectual solidarity. Had no 
other results followed from the Convention of 1835, 
nevertheless it would be entitled to rank among the 
greatest events of our history. 

But other results did follow. The work of the 
Convention brought into existence two political in- 
stitutions which, though unrecognized by the Consti- 
tution, have been powerful factors in uniting the 
people and in shaping the history of the State. One 
of these is the State Conventions of political parties, 
the other, the canvass of the State before elections 
by the nominees for State offices. So long as the gov- 
ernor was elected by the Legislature, the people not 
only had no voice in the election, but had even less 
voice in selecting the party candidates. This selec- 
tion was made by a small coterie of party leaders — 
in modern political parlance, the ring — and their fol- 
lowers in the Legislature merely ratitied their choice. 
But when the election of governor was given to the 
people, it became necessary to give the people some 
voice in selecting their candidates. Consequently 
the political convention, composed of delegates rep- 
resenting the rank and file of the party, became an 
institution. These conventions not only named can- 



84 Ante-Bbllum Builders 

didates, but they also issued platforms stating the 
measures which their candidates favored. It became 
necessary, therefore, since the people now voted di- 
rectly on the candidates, for the candidates to go be- 
fore the people and discuss the measures they fa- 
vored. Many conservative statesmen, foreseeing this 
result, opposed the amendment changing the mode 
of electing governors. One of the delegates in the 
Convention declared that he had lately seen a gentle- 
man from Tennessee, where the governor was elected 
by the people, who told him that "candidates were 
traveling through the State on an electioneering 
campaign at expense and trouble to themselves and 
great annoyance to the people." Perhaps this cus- 
tom has at times proved annoying, nevertheless, it 
cannot be denied that it has brought the people into 
closer touch with their government, familiarized 
them with political questions, imposed upon them a 
larger responsibility in the determination of govern- 
mental policies, and greatly advanced the cause of 
democracy. 

With the adjournment of the Convention of 1885 
and the expiration of his third term as governor, 
Swain's political career came to an end. Although 
only thirty-four years of age he had, nevertheless 
held the highest offices within the gift of the State 
and consequently his ambition had nothing more to 
look forward to in politics. Just before the close of 
his term as governor, the presidency of the Univer- 
sity became vacant by the death of President Joseph 
CaldAvell, and Swain conceived a desire to be his 
successor. He was not, as we have seen, a man of 
liberal education and on that account there was 
some opposition to his election as President of the 



OF North Carolina 85 

University. Ou the other hand he had demonstrated 
his ability as a good executive and it was thought 
that a man who had shown that he knew so well how 
to manage men could not fail to know how to man- 
age boys. This view prevailed with the trustees, 
and Swain was elected. Some of the scholars of the 
Faculty were much disgusted. One of them sneer- 
ingly declared that "the people of North Carolina 
had done everything they could for Swain in politics 
and now they were going to send him to the Univer- 
sity to be educated." But although Swain was not 
a scholar in the technical sense of the word, he was 
by no means an ignorant man. His knowledge of 
political economy, of history, and of literature, all 
of which he had studied profoundly, had given him 
a broad and liberal culture which equalled, if it did 
not exceed that of his more scholarly critics. 

From the time Swain entered upon his duties as 
President of the University few notable events oc- 
curred in his career to attract the attention of the 
biographer; the story of his life from 1835 until hiy 
death is the history of the University for that period, 
and amply vindicates the judgment of those who 
placed him at its head. He gathered around him the 
ablest Faculty in any institution of the slave-holding 
states, he extended and enriched the course of study, 
he increased the number of students from about 90 
to upwards of 400, and he placed the University first 
among the collegiate institutions of the South. But 
his greatest service was his personal influence on 
the young men with whom he came in contact. As 
great as had been his own personal share in shaping 
the history of the State, it was as nothing in com- 
parison with what he did through his influence in 



86 Ante-Bellum Builders 

moulding the characters and shaping the careers of 
her future leaders. A single illustration selected 
from a great number will suffice to show how great 
his influence was. 

Among those whose characters and careers were 
thus influenced by contact with Swain at the Univer- 
sity, was a mountain lad destined, like Swain him- 
self, to become the Chief Magistrate of North Caro- 
lina at the early age of thirty-two, who in a long 
career of public service earned a place in history as 
North Carolina's greatest son. This lad was Zebu- 
Ion Baird Vance. In an address at the University 
in 1877 Vance acknowledged the influence that 
Swain had exercised in shaping his career in the fol- 
lowing passage inspired by his own personal experi- 
ence. He says, referring to Governor Swain : "Al- 
though the work he did here was undoubtedly the 
great work of his life, it is impossible for us to com- 
pute it. As with the silent forces of nature, which 
we know to be the greatest that are exerted in this 
world, but which yet elude the grasp of our senses, so 
it is impossible for us to measure the power of the 
able and faithful teacher. . . . No man ever lived in 
North Carolina whose opportunities for thus influ- 
encing those who control her destinies have been 
greater than Governor Swain's were. . . . The sparks 
of good which he elicited, the trains of generous am- 
bition which he set on fire, the number of young lives 
which his teachings have directed into the paths of 
virtue and knowledge, and colored with the hues of 
heaven — who but God shall tell? . . . How many 
great thoughts worked out in the still watches of the 
night; how many noble orations in the forum, stir- 
ring the hearts of men ; hoAv many eloquent and mo- 



OP North Carolina 87 

mentous discourses in the pulpit; how mauy bold 
sti'okes of patriotic statesmanship ; how many daring 
deeds and sublime deaths on bloody fields of battle; 
how many good and generous and honest things done 
in secret ; how many evil things and sore temptations 
resisted; in short, how much of that which consti- 
tutes the public and private virtue of our people, the 
prosperity, the honor, and the glory of our State 
mij:ht not be traced to the initial inspiration of 
David L. Swain ! Say what you will for the mighty 
things done by the mighty ones of earth, but here is 
the truest honor and renown. ... I had the honor — 
aixi I consider it both an honor and a happy fortune 
—to be on terms of confidential intimacy with him 
from my first entrance into the University until his 
death. We were in the utmost accord on all ques- 
tions pertaining to church and state, and during my 
subsequent career, especially in those troublous 
years of war, 1 consulted him more frequently per- 
haps than any other man in the State, except Gover- 
nor Graham."^ 

The outbreak of war in 1861 presented new^ and 
greater dilficulties to President Sw^ain. He deter- 
mined if it were humanly possible that even in the 
stress of war the doors of the University should re- 
main open. It was a gigantic task, for such was the 
impetuosity with which the students rushed to arms 
at the call of their states that of the eighty members 
of the Freshman class of 18G0 but one remained to 
pursue his studies, and he too had ofi'ered his serv- 
ices to the Confederacy and had been rejected on ac- 



1. This address is printed in Peele's Lives of Distinguished 
North Carolinians, 229-255. 



88 Antb-Bbllum Builders 

count of his health. At the close of the year 1860, 
there were 430 students in the University; on the 
15th of October, 1863, there were only 63. In a letter 
of that date to Jefferson Davis, sending a resolution 
of the trustees requesting that students might be 
exempt from military service until they had finished 
their college work, President Swain gives us a vivid 
idea not only of the difficulties with which he was 
contending but also of the terribleness of war. Says 
he: 

"A simple statement of the facts, which seem to 
me to be pertinent, without any attempt to illustnte 
and enforce them by argument, will, I suppose, suf- 
ficiently accomplish the purposes of the trustees. 

"At the close of the collegiate year 1859-'60 (June 
7, 1860), the whole number of students in our cata 
logue was 430. . . . 

"Of the eight young men who received the first 
distinction in the Senior class, four are in the grave, 
and a fifth a wounded prisoner. More than a seventh 
of the aggregate number of graduates are known to 
have fallen in battle. 

"The Freshman class of eighty members pressed 
into service with such impetuosity, that but a single 
individual remained to graduate at the last com- 
mencement; and he in the intervening time had en- 
tered the army, been discharged on account of im- 
paired health, and was permitted by special favor to 
rejoin his class. 

"The faculty at that time was composed of four- 
teen members, no one of whom was liable to con- 
scription. Five of the fourteen were permitted by 
the trustees to volunteer. One of these has recently 
returned from a long imprisonment in Ohio, with a 



OP North Carolina 89 

ruined constitution. A second is a wounded pris- 
oner, now at Baltimore, A third fell at Gettysburg. 
The remaining two are in active field service at 
present. 

"The nine gentlemen who now constitute the corps 
of instructors are, with a single exception, clergy- 
men, or laymen beyond the age of conscription. No 
one of them has a son of the requisite age, who has 
not entered the service as a volunteer. Five of the 
eight sons of members of the faculty are now in ac- 
tive service; one fell mortally wounded at Gettys 
burg; another at South Mountain. 

"The village of Chapel Hill owes its existence to 
the University, and is of course materially affected 
by the prosperity or decline of the institution. The 
young men of the village responded to the call of 
their country with the same alacrity which charac- 
terized the college classes; and fifteen of them — a 
larger proportion than is exhibited in any other town 
or village in the State — have already fallen in battle. 
The departed are more numerous than the survivors ; 
and the melancholy fact is prominent with respect 
to both the village and the University, that the most 
promising young men have been the earliest victims. 

''Without entering into further details, permit me 
to assure you as the result of extensive and careful 
observation and inquiry, that I know of no similar 
institution or community in the Confederacy that 
has rendered greater services, or endured greater 
losses and privations, than the University of North 
Carolina, and the village of Chapel Hill. 

"The number of students at present here is G3. . . . 
"A rigid enforcement of the conscription act may 



90 Ante-Bbllum Builders 

take from us nine or ten young men with physical 
constitutions in general, better suited to the quiet 
pursuits of literature and science than to military 
service. They can make no appreciable addition to 
the army; but their withdrawal may very seriously 
affect our organization, and in its ultimate effects 
cause us to close the doors of the oldest University 
at present accessible to the students of the Confed- 
eracy. "^ 

President Davis issued the order requested, de- 
claring that "the seed-corn should not be ground 
up." But the exigencies of war became too pressing, 
and within another year the order was recalled and 
every student at the University capable of bearing 
arms joined the Confederate army. Nevertheless the 
doors of the University remained open ; even after 
the Confederacy had fallen and the buildings of the 
University turned into barracks and stables for the 
4,000 Michigan cavalry which occuped Chapel Hill, 
the old bell was wrung daily, prayers were said in 
the Chapel, and the dozen students, who had wan- 
dered back to their old haunts, this one with an arm 
missing, that one without a leg, veterans in their 
youth, attended their daily recitations. It was a 
noble, an heroic achievement, and Swain was justly 
proud of it as the greatest thing in his life. 

But what war failed to do. Reconstruction did. No 
sooner had the State fallen into the power of the 
carpet-bag leaders and their black followers, than 
they seized upon the University, demanded the resig- 



1. Weeks, Stephen B. : University of North Carolina in the 
Civil War, 25-27; the substance of the letter is given 
in Battle: History of the University of North Carolina, 
I., 732-4. 



OP North Carolina 91 

nation of the Tresident and faculty, sent a guard of 
negroes to take possession, and, for the first time 
since 1795, closed up its doors. Fortunately for 
Swain he had not long to endure this humiliation, to 
contemplate this ruin of his life's work. In August, 
18G8, he was thrown from a buggy and severely in- 
jured. After lingering for two weeks, on the morn- 
ing of August 27, he suddenly fainted, and expired 
without a pain. 

Governor Vance, a life-long and intimate associate, 
in the address from which I have already quoted, 
gives what seems to me to be a calm and judicious 
estimate of Swain's life and work. "In many senses 
of the term Governor Swain was not a great man." 
As a politician, a lawyer, a judge, a scholar, he is 
not to be ranked among the great men of North Caro- 
lina. "But," says Vance, "in many things he was 
entitled to be called great, if we mean by that term 
that he so used the faculties he possessed that he 
raised himself beyond and above the great mass of 
his fellows. In him there was a rounded fullness of 
the qualities, intellectual and moral, w^hich consti- 
tute the excellence of manhood, in a degree never ex- 
celled by any citizen of North Carolina whom I have 
personally known, except by William A. Graham. If 
there was in Swain no one grand quality of intellect 
which lifted him out of comparison with any but the 
demigods of our race neither was there any element 
so wanting as to sink him into or below the common 
mass. If there were in him no Himalayan peaks of 
genius, piercing into the regions of everlasting frost 
and ice, neither were there any yawning chasms of 
slimy pools below the tide-waters of mediocrity. He 
rose from the plain of his fellow-men like the Alle- 



92 Antb-Bellum Builders 

ghanies, in whose bosom he was born, by regular and 
easy gradations — so easy that you know not how 
high you are until you turn to gaze backward — every 
step surrounded by beauty and fertility — until he 
rested high over all the land. If there be those who 
singly tower above him in gifts, or attainments, or 
distinctions, there are none whom as a whole we can 
contemplate with more interest, affection, and admi- 
ration ; none whose work for North Carolina will 
prove to be more valuable, or more lasting, or more 
important to future generations; none to whom, at 
the great final review, the greeting may be more 
heartily addressed : 'Servant of God, well done !' " 



IV 



Calvin Henderson Wiley' 



The political reforms instituted by the Convention 
of 1835 placed the government of North Carolina in 
control of the people of the State, and thus paved the 
way for carrying into eifect the educational program 
of Archibald D. Murphey. After his death, nearly a 
quarter of a century elapsed before another leader 
appeared to take up the work that he had begun. At 
the time of Murphey's death the net result of his la- 
bors for public education was the creation of the 
Literary Fund and organization of the Literary 
Board. But several years were vet to pass before 
the Legislature was ready to take its own work seri- 
ously. Although they had solemnly set aside this 
Literary Fund for educational purposes, for ten 
years the Legislature had not the moral courage to 
resist the temptation to use the income arising frnT-> 
this fund for other purposes of the State Govern- 
ment. In a single month of 1832 as much as $64,000 
of the Literary Fund was "borrowed" and diverted 



1. See also: Connor, R. D. W.: Calvin Henderson Wiley, 
Biog. Hist, of N. C, II, 427-41; Weeks, Stephen B., 
"Beginnings of the Common School System in the 
South," Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Educa- 
tion, 1896-97, Ch. XXIX.; Joyner, J. Y.: Calvin Hen- 
derson Wiley. N. C. Day Program, 1905; Mebane, C. 
H., Biennial Report of the Superintendent of Public 
Instruction of North Carolina, 1896-97 and 1897-98. 



94 Ante-Bbllum Builders 

to other uses than that for which it was created. The 
treasurer uttering a vigorous protest against this 
policy, compared tlie Legislature to the ''improvident 
heir, who wastes in mere indolence what has been 
saved by the industry and economy of the ancestor 
for the lasting improvement of the inheritance."^ 

In 1836, however, the Literary Fund was suddenly 
increased to an amount that made it large enough to 
command the respect even of the Legislature. In 
that year, as I stated in my opening lecture, the sur- 
plus revenue of the Federal Government was dis- 
tributed to the several states; and of her share of 
this fund North Carolina devoted |1,133,757.39 to 
the Literary Fund. In 1838, the funds of the Liter- 
ary Board amounted to more than |1,390,000 and 
yielded an income sufficient to give a public school 
system a fair start. Accordingly the public school 
law of 1839, which I have already discussed, was en- 
acted, and in 1840 was adopted by all except seven of 
the counties in the State. There was, however, one 
fundamental defect in this act. The Literary Board 
was made the executive head of the school system, 
and this Board, from the very nature of its composi- 
tion, was inadequate to attend properly to the vari- 
ety of duties incumbent upon the executive of such a 
system. A single executive head was needed. Recom- 
mendations for the creation of the office of superin- 
tendent of comnion schools were continuously urged 
upon the Legislature during a period of twelve years, 
but with no results. The system accordingly flound- 



1. The proceedings and reports of the Literary Board are 
printed in Coon: Public Education in North Carolina, 
II, seriatim. 



OF North Carolina 95 

ered about ou an iinexplond sea without a pilot and 
was on the point of ji,oing to wreck when Calvin H. 
Wiley appeared and took hold of the helm. 

Born in 1810, prepared for college at the Caldwell 
Institute in Creensboro, a graduate of the University 
of North Carolina, Wiley was admitted to the bar in 
1841, and settled in the town of Oxford. Clients 
were few, and the young attorney found more time 
than cases on his hands. This time he devoted large- 
ly to literary pursuits, in which he always delighted. 
From 1841 to 1848 he edited the Oxford Mercury. In 
1847 he published an historical novel called "Ala- 
mance; or the (Jreat and Final Experiment." Two 
years later a second novel appeared under the title 
of "Roanoke; or where is Utopia?" 

But the author found graver work awaiting him 
than the writing of romances. A close observer of 
the educational and industrial conditions in North 
Carolina, he wrote feelingly and eloquently of what 
he saw. Among other things, he noticed with great 
solicitude that the people of North Carolina, un- 
aware of the immense resources of their own State, 
were deserting her by the thousands, seeking in other 
regions fields for imaginary advantages. He wrote 
that the State had "long been regarded by its own 
citizens as a mere nursery to grow up in ;" that it 
had become a great camping ground, the inhabitants 
considering themselves as merely tenanted here for a 
while; that thousands sought homes elsewhere, 
whose sacrifices in moving would have paid for twen- 
ty years their share of taxation, sufficient to give to 
North Carolina all the fancied advantages of those 
regions whither they went to be taxed with disease 
and suffering; that the melancholy sign, "For sale," 



96 Antb-Bbllum Builders 

seemed plowed in deep, black characters over the 
whole State; and that even the State flag which 
wiAed over the capitol, indicating the sessions of the 
General Assembly, was jestingly called by our neigh- 
bors of Virginia and South Carolina an auctioneer's 
sign. The "ruinous effects," he wrote, "are eloquent- 
ly recorded in deserted farms, in wide wastes of gut- 
tered sedgefields, in neglected resources, in the ab- 
sence of improvements, and in the hardships, sacri- 
fices and sorrows of constant emigration."^ 

In addition to this deplorable condition of affairs, 
Wiley observed that : 

"It is a fact worthy of being universally known 
that North Carolina is considered by bookmakers the 
best mart in the world for uucurrent and trashy pro- 
ductions, and the very refuse of literary quackery is 
sent out here and circulated among our people. For 
most of the works of this sort Northern publishers 
have agencies all over North Carolina, and thus 
while there are none to circulate our own books, and 
the people are kept in ignorance of their own history 
and of the character and resources of their State, 
they are drugged with foreign narcotics and heavily 
taxed for the benefit of fabrics that will not sell and 
cannot be sold where they are manufactured."^ 

These two evils caused him no little anxiety about 
the future of the State. Careful study of the situa- 
tion revealed to him but one remedy — universal edu- 
cation. The children must be taught to know and 
appreciate the opportunities offered at home, and 



1. Report of 1853, 26. Leg. Doc, 1854-55. 

2. Weeks: "Beginning of the Common School System in 

the South." Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Edu- 
cation for 1896-97, 1432. 



OF North Carolina 97 

must be given tlie traiuiug necessary for intelligent 
use of those opportunities. Year bj year the convic- 
tion grew steadily ui)on him that he could render no 
greater service to North Carolina than by revealing 
the State to herself through a complete system of 
public schools. Abandoning personal ambition, he 
threw himself into this new work with all the energy 
of his ardent nature. 

A study of the public school law of 1839 convinced 
him that the first step toward reform must be the 
creation of the office of superintendent of common 
schools; and to the accomplishment of this object he 
now set himself with the accustomed vigor of the 
young reformer on fire with zeal and ambition. 

In order to introduce the necessary reforms, he 
desired a seat in the General Assembly. As he real- 
ized that there was no chance of his obtaining this 
in Granville county, he returned to his native Guil- 
ford, and was at once elected a member of the Gen- 
eral Assembly of 1850-51. During this session he in- 
troduced a bill providing for the appointment of a 
superintendent of the common schools. He support- 
ed his bill with a speech of great power and elo- 
quence, but failed to secure its passage. Disappoint- 
ed but not disheartened, he again stood for election 
and was returned. Through his influence a similar 
bill was introduced by J. B. Cherry of Bertie and 
passed both Houses.^. This Act provided for the 
election of a superintendent by the General Assem- 
bly. He was to hold office for a term of two years, 
or until his successor should be duly appointed and 
qualified. His duties, as outlined by the act, con- 

1. Chapter 18, Public Acts of 1852. 



98 Ante-Bellum Builders 

sisted of the usual ones, such as collecting informa- 
tion, making proper reports, seeing to the enforce- 
ment of the school laws, etc. But in the words of 
Dr. Wiley : 

"The head of the common-school system ought to 
study; like the leader of an army, he ought to have 
the whole field before him and to initiate every gen- 
eral movement with great care. He ought to study 
other systems as well as his own ; he needs a previous 
preparation just as much as a lawyer, engineer, or 
physician."! "His duties cannot be expressed by 
law, and if he does not possess the spirit of his sta- 
tion, a conformity to the mere letter of legal require- 
ments . . . will not be a discharge of his duties to the 
})ublic. He is the chief executive head of the system; 
. . . he ought to be the chief thinking mind ; the 
organ of intercommunication among its parts; the 
recording memory also of the system. He has also to 
be the heart as well as the head of the system, in- 
fusing into it life, animation and hope, encouraging 
the desponding and stimulating the energies of the 
entlnisiastic.'- 

This law once passed, it became necessary to find 
a man of sufficient ability to undertake the arduous 
and responsible duties of the office. All voices called 
on one man. Though he was a Whig, and the Legis- 
lature was Democratic, yet State patriotism pre- 
vailed over party allegiance, and without solicita- 
tion on his part, Wiley was elected in December, 
1852. On January 1, 1853, in the thirty-fourth year 
of his age, he entered upon the duties of his office. 
Surely no man ever undertook an arduous task with 

1. Report of 1855, 24. Leg. Doc, 1854-55. 



OF North Cakolina 99 

a greater sense of the vast [)ersonal responsibility 
that lay upon him. He realized that upon his con- 
duct of the duties of his otlice depended the life of 
the common schools. He had everything to do and 
everybody to instruct. The compass of experience 
by which he miglit steer his course, seeking the chan- 
nels of safety and avoiding the shoals and whirl- 
pools of danger, was lacking to him. But he did not 
flinch from his duty. His steady hand grasyjed tlie 
helm, guided by a penetrating insight into the 
murky conditions surrounding him and supported 
by a heart strong through faith in his cause, in his 
people and in divine guidance. 

Vhe attempt to establish a system of public 
schools in North Carolina, owing to the lack of prop- 
er organization and the absence of an efficient ex- 
ecutive head, had proved worse than a failure. 
Teachers were scarce and inefficient, schoolhouses 
were worthless, uncomfortable, unhealthy, and in- 
adequate for their purposes, money was squandered, 
results were meagre, and the confidence of the peo- 
])le in the schools absolutely desti-oyed. 

As a consequence of these conditions. Dr. Wiley 
found himself faced at the outset by six difficulties :i 
First, the diversified character of the people, result- 
ing in a lack of sympathetic harmony fatal to a sys- 
tematic conduct of the schools; second, the novelty 
of the common school idea, from which grew miscon- 
ceptions of the purposes of the schools and an im- 



1. The discussion of Dr. Wiley's tasks, problems, policies 
and measures is based on all his reports, speeches, 
etc., and it is not always practicable to cite the reader 
to specific utterances in support of every statement. 
His entire series of reports must be studied as a 
whole. 



100 Ante-Bbllum Builders 

patience at their necessarily slow work; third, the 
illiteracy of the population, which gave birth to a 
mistrust of the ability of the people to conduct suc- 
cessfully a system of schools; fourth, the erroneous 
idea that the common schools were mainly charity 
schools for the poor, from which grew a distaste 
among many people to accept their benefits; fifth, 
the lack of feeling of responsibility for the schools 
among the citizens of the State causing difiiculty in 
getting efficient men to fill the official positions in 
the counties ; finally, the scarcity of teachers, which, 
of course, struck at the very roots of the system. To 
meet and overcome these obstacles, there were, as 
Dr. Wiley wrote, "a thousand little springs invisi- 
ble to the casual observer to be delicately touched, a 
thousand nameless duties to be performed, a thou- 
sand crosses and difficulties unknown to the world 
at large." 

He went about his work with determination, ener- 
gy, and patience, having at the beginning six objects 
in view. They were: To gain information for his 
own guidance; to let teachers, officers and pupils 
know and feel that the State as a State was really 
interested in their welfare; to diffuse information 
on public school systems in general and the North 
Carolina system in particular; to enforce the laws; 
to initiate himself all needful reforms; and finally, 
to make the schools supply themselves with teachers. 

The work was slow, discouraging and tedious, 
and the superintendent was often compelled to draw 
heavily on his fund of patience. The results were 
far beyond his calculations. Old friends were dis- 
covered, new ones made and enlisted in the work: 
enemies were met and routed; tardy officers were 



or North Carolina 101 

spurred ou to more Uiligeut and efficient work; in- 
competent ones louud out and removed; many mis- 
conceptions were corrected; colleges, liigii schools 
and academies were awakened to a sense of their 
vital interest in the common schools; unity was 
gradually introduced into the system; and school 
men in all parts of the tState and in all phases of 
educational work were tuught to see that the inter- 
ests of all were bound together in one great and 
ever-widening circle. 

One of the most apparent evils which it v/as nec- 
essary for the superintendent to reform was the mul- 
tiplicity and frequent changes of text-Looks. Dr. 
Wiley was often called upon to interfere in this 
matter, and he felt justified in using all his author- 
ity to suppress the evil. "The object of my efforts," 
he wrote,^ "was, first to drive from our schools bad 
books; second, to prevent frequent and injurious 
changes; . . . and third, to secure the use of a uni- 
form series, whereby expense would be avoided and 
teachers would be enabled to arrange their pupils 
in classes." Where suitable text-books could not be 
found, he set to work with characteristic energy to 
prepare them himself, always bearing in mind his 
original desire to awaken North Carolinians to a 
sense of the great resources of their State. For in- 
stance, he notified publishers that he would not ap- 
prove of any Geography unless he w^as allowed to 
correct the text so far as it related to North Caro- 
lina. Several publishers consented to this, and he 
selected "Mitchell's Intermediate Geography." To 
this book he added an appendix giving a condensed 

1. Report of 1853, p. 10. Leg. Doc, 1854-55. 



102 Ante-Bbllum Builders 

but accurate account of the State. He directed the 
preparation of a i.ew map, showing all the railroads, 
plank roads, and intended routes of travel; and in 
other ways emphasized the resources and opportuni- 
ties of the State. "The time is coming," he said 
with reference to this work, "when very material 
changes will be effected in the routes of commerce. 
Ail things considered, the finest agricultural coun- 
try in the world is the valley of the Mississippi and 
its tributaries. . . . Between the nearer Atlantic and 
this vast granary of the West and Southwest stands 
the iniftosing barrier of the Allegheny Mountains, 
long thought to be an impassable wall, and a limit 
to the iron track of commerce. But modern science 
has overcome greater difficulties to secure . . . the 
shortest passage, and the gallant states of Virginia 
and Georgia are already storming those heights with 
every prospect of success, and none of these have 
so great inducements to undertake the enterprise as 
the people of North Carolina. Nearly midway the 
Atlantic coast, in a temperate and healthy climate, 
is the unchangeable, safe and capacious harbor of 
Beaufort, and from hence through our fertile up- 
lands and the gorges of our ow^n beautiful moun- 
tains, lies the shortest route to the great Southwest. 
To foreshadow the grand commercial destiny we 
might attain on the youthful mind of the State and 
prepare it to grasp and realize the magnificent con- 
summation, I took much j)ains to have all the pro- 
posed railroads over the mountains and their bear- 
ings and connections made familiar to the publish- 
ers of the geography in question ."^ 

1. Ibid, 27. 



OF North Carolina 103 

Nothing in Dr. Wiley's long career of usefulness 
to the State better illustrates his unselfish devotion 
to her interests than his action in regard to a series 
of North Carolina readers prepared by himself for 
use in the schools. The purpose of the work was the 
same as that of his supplement to Mitchell's Geo- 
graphy. It contained a '-familiar history and de- 
scription of the State, with compositions in prose 
and verse by distinguished North Carolinians." "Its 
object," said he, ''was obvious; and to all acquainted 
with our peculiar position, our desponding and er- 
roneous estimate of our resources, and the history 
of that singular and remarkable exodus or emigra- 
tion which for years has retarded our progress in 
every species of improvement, the uses of such a 
work, well compiled, were fully apparent."^ He 
had begun the readers before his elevation to the 
superintendency of the common schools, but upon 
assuming the duties of his office he felt that he 
ought not to have any investment in school-books. 
He therefore nmde arrangements for Dr. F. M. Hub- 
bard, Professor of English Literature in the State 
University, to complete the work, and sold the stere- 
otype plates of his readers and all the copies on 
hand to A. S. Barnes & Company of New York at 
original cost. By this arrangement Dr. Wiley re- 
ceived nothing for his valuable copyright, no profit 
on his books and no pay for his work and expense, 
besides losing three years' interest on the original 
investment. 2 There was nothing ostentatious about 
this; it was done quietly, and solely that the books 



1. Ibid, 11. 

2. Ibid, 26-27, 49-50. 



104 Ante-Bellum Builders 

might be more useful. The readers were received 
with every mark of approval. 

By far the most important problem the superin- 
tendent was called upon to solve was the problem of 
supplying teachers. Dr. Wiley went about this mat- 
ter with his usual energy and wisdom. As he stated 
it the problem was: "How were eight hundred to a 
thousand old-field school-teachers to be utilized in a 
system of one genius, one law, and one end, when 
to each his own school had long been the education- 
al world, of which he was the center and sover- 
eign ?"i And how were the 15U0 or 2UU0 new teach- 
ers needed to be supplied? He aimed ultimately at 
normal schools, but in the beginning these were out 
of the question. For the present the common schools 
must supply themselves. He considered that their 
ability to do that would be the best test by which to 
judge of their character and success. He devised a 
plan, simple but effective, by which teachers not 
only could be supplied, but also aroused to study 
and continuous self-improvement. In order to test 
the results of his plan, he sent to each chairman in 
the State a circular asking what had been his ob- 
servation of it. Fifty-five answers were received. 
One said, "bad;" one said, "no change;" four were 
"in doubt, but hopeful ;" forty-nine thought the plan 
"good." In this way pupils leaving the common 
schools could enter the ranks of the teachers and 
gradually work to the top. As a result of his plan, 
Dr. Wiley asserted with some pride that those who 
now became teacliers, sought places in the public 



1. Weeks: Beginning of the Common School System in 
the South, 1436. 



OP North Carolina 105 

schools in preference to conducting private schools, 
though formerlj' the reverse had been true. 

But it was not enough simply to supply the de- 
maud for teachers; it was equally essential that a 
constant pressure be brought to bear on them for 
improvement. Besides the annual examinations, Dr. 
Wiley conceived and put into execution three other 
schemes: the establishment of a Teachers' Library 
Association in each school district; the publication 
of the North Carolina School Journal; and the or- 
ganization of the Educational Association of North 
Carolina. 1 

Through the Teachei's' Library Association, the 
teachers of the common schools were supplied with 
professional literature, for Dr. Wiley constantly 
urged upon them the necessity of studying their 
profession. He himself set the example. His words 
are as true now as they were then, when he said : 
"Scatter judiciousl}' over the State good copies of 
an}' good work on education and it will create a 
revolution."^ 

The superintendent constantly felt the need of an 
organ of communication between the various edu- 
cational forces of the State. To serve this purpose, 
he turned over in his mind plans for the establish- 
ment of an educational journal. The first number 
appeared in 1856, under the name of the North Caro- 
lina Common School Journal. It was to be issued 
quarterly from Greensboro. After an existence of 
two years, during which time it was kept alive only 
by Dr. Wiley's unlimited zeal and energy, it was 
adopted as the official organ of the North Carolina 

1. Ibid, 1447-52. 

2. Report of 1854. 44. Leg. Doc. 1854-55. 



106 Ante-Bbllum Builders 

Teachers' Association; its name was changed to the 
North Carolina Journal of Education, and Dr. Wiley 
was elected editor-in-chief, assisted by fourteen asso- 
ciate-editors. The list of subscribers was small and 
the financial difficulties great, yet the journal took 
and kej)t a high place among its contemporaries. 
Though the war soon forced half of its exchanges to 
suspend publication and though the difficulty in 
getting paper increased daily, the journal held its 
own until 1864. In March of that year, the printing 
establishment of Campbell & Allbright, from which 
the journal was issued, was destroyed by fire, and 
along with it the journal fell. Its influence for good 
in North Carolina was beyond calculation. 

The same year in which the journal was estab- 
lished witnessed another of Dr. Wiley's triumphs. 
Numerous efforts had previously been made in the 
State to organize a teachers' association, but all 
had failed ignominiously. On one occasion the meet- 
ing had been widely advertised, and on the appoint- 
ed day one teacher appeared. However, Dr. Wiley 
was a courageous man and was not to be daunted 
by the failure of others. In October, 1856, at Salis- 
bury, he succeeded, after strenuous efforts, in organ- 
izing the educational forces of the State into a 
Teachers' Association. Six other meetings followed, 
all of them well attended, not only by men promi- 
nent in educational work, but also by many promi- 
nent in the other professions and in business life. 
The Association was on the high road to greater 
usefulness when it fell to pieces amid the thunders 
of war. Dr. Wiley considered the Journal of Educa- 
tion and the Teachers' Association his two chief 
aids in promoting the common school system. 



OF North Carolina 107 

He labored long and faithfully ; he met and ovei - 
came almost insuperable difficulties; and he placed 
his State foremost among the States of the Sout'i 
in the education of her children. During the decade 
Irom isr)() to Isr.O. covering the i)eriod of Dr. Wiley's 
work, although the poi)uhi1ion of the State increased 
less than 14 per cent., the number of children in the 
common schools increased more than 80 per cent. 
In ISoO the percentage of illiteracy in the State 
among the voting population was 20.2 ; by 18G0 this 
iiad been reduced to 23.1. Tn IS.IO Dr. Wiley had 
been alarmed at the neglect of our wealth-i)roducing 
resources. At the close of the decade he had ample 
grounds for declai'ing tliat a great revolution was 
silently going on in North Carolina. Dr. Wiley's 
fears for the future of the State had been aroused 
by the constant stream of emigration from her bor- 
ders. By 1860 the outward current had been checked 
and an inflowing current started. The spirit of edu- 
cation was revealing itself in the industrial progress 
of the State; in the generally awakened confidence 
in her resources ; and in the growing attachment for 
home. The blight which had fallen on North Caro- 
lina was about to vanish under the touch of his 
strong hand.i 

Of the general success of the common school sys- 
tem in 1860, Wiley said: 

''The educational system of North Carolina is now 
attracting the favorable attention of tJie States 
south, west, and north of us. . . . All modern sta- 
tistical publications give us a rank far in advance 
of the position which we occupied in such works a 



1. See his Report for 1859. Leg, Dec. 



108 Antb-Bellum Builders 

few years ago; and without referring to numerous 
other facts equally significant, our moral influence 
may be illustrated by the fact that the superintend- 
ent of common schools was pressingly invited to 
visit, free of expense, the legislature of the most 
powerful State south of us (Georgia), to aid in 
preparing a system of public instruction similar to 
ours. He receives constant inquiries from abroad 
in regard to our plan; and beyond all doubt our 
schools, including those of all grades, are now the 
greatest temporal interest of the State. . . . North 
Carolina has the start of all her Southern sisters in 
educational nmtters. ... If then she is true to her- 
self, and justly comprehends the plain logic of the 
facts of her situation, she will now . . . prudently 
and courageously advance in the direction which 
leads alike to safety, to peace, and to prosperity. . . . 
Such action is not merely important as likely to 
lead to future greatness; it is also a defensive and 
imperative necessity of the present. If the Union 
remains, no one will deny the importance, to our 
peace as well as honor, of having a strong and pros- 
perous State, able to command the respect of her 
confederates; if the Union is dissolved, then North 
Carolina is our only country for the present, and 
our present security and future hopes will depend 
on her power to stand alone or honorably to com- 
pete with rivals in a new confederacy."^ 

Whatever the success that had been attained was 
admitted by all to be due to the genius of Calvin H. 
Wiley. So universal was the confidence felt in his 
ability and integrity, that he numbered his sup- 

1. Report for 1860. Part II., 7-9. 



OF North Carolina 109 

porters in all i-anks an<l conditions of life, in all 
religious denominations and in all political parties, 
and received hearty support from all. A Whig when 
elected by a Democratic legislature, he retained his 
party aliiliatious and voted according to his politi- 
cal convictions, and yet was continuously re-elected 
by a legislature generally Democratic at a time 
when party feeling ran high. On one occasion the 
Democrats in the legislature moved his election at 
the beginning of the session, in order to forestall 
the rise of party passion and the possibility of a 
Democratic opponent. 

This confidence reflected no little credit on the 
Democratic Party, and the results showed that it 
was not misplaced. Dr. Wiley was met at the be- 
ginning of his work by six obstacles. He had found 
the people separated by their diversified characters 
and aspirations; he gave them a common interest 
and united them in a common effort to promote a 
common cause; he found them ignorant of the com- 
mon school idea, he taught them by unanswerable 
example and filled their minds and hearts with 
knowledge of and pride in their educational system; 
he found them diffident of their ability to manage; 
he put them to the test and compelled their confi- 
dence in themselves and their schools; he found 
their minds filled with errors, he turned on them the 
light of knowledge and they vanished like mist be- 
fore the sun ; he found them indifferent, he roused 
their enthusiastic support; he found a vineyard 
without laborers, he created an army of devoted 
workers. 

But with the outbreak of the war came the su- 
preme test. North Carolina seceded from the Union 



110 Ante-Bbllum Builders 

May 20, 1801. It became apparent from the first 
that an attack would be made upon the school fund 
for the purpose of converting it into revenue for the 
suj)port of the war. Dr. Wiley was tilled with great 
anxiety and began at once to prepare for the attack. 
He first sought the support of the county oflflcials by 
issuing to them a very able circular, giving the argu- 
ments in favor of preserving the school fund intact 
for school i)urposes. His next step was to win the 
governor and his council. Previous to the meeting 
of the tirst war legislature, he appeared before them 
to present his case. His statement was able and his 
appeal elocpient. "No people," he exclaimed, ''could 
or would be free who were unable or unwilling to 
educate their children;"' and the fact that the State 
was waging a war for independence was an addi- 
tional reason why the schools should be kept open. 
He cried out with indignation against those who 
were so short-sighted as to "think that a war for 
political, social, commercial and intellectual inde- 
pendence could be waged with better results by ar- 
resting or destroying all those springs of life on 
which national wealth and greatness are founded." 
The governor and the members of his council were 
completely won over, and entered into a solemn, 
though informal, covenant to support the superin- 
tendent in resisting any attack on the school fund. 
This agreement, be it said to Governor Ellis's credit, 
was faithfully kept, and the precedent thus set was 
followed by his successors. 

Dr. Wiley was ably assisted in this work by the 
North Carolina Teachers' Association. In Novem- 
ber, 1861, the association presented a memorial to 
the constitutional convention, then in session, pray- 



OF North Carolina 111 

infi; that "by im ameudmout to the constitution the 
proceeds of the conunon school fund be sacredly and 
permanently secured to their original i)urposes/' 

It was well that the superintendent and the 
friends of education prepared their forces for at- 
tack. It came soon after the assembling of the Leg- 
ishiture. Both sides received able support. In the 
Senate, Governor John M. Morehead led the defense. 
Outside the work of Dr. Wiley was arduous, skilful 
and effective. Nothing shows better than this tight 
the strength of the system built up by Dr. Wiley. 
Its powerful aid was invoked and the bill providing 
for the use of the school fund for war ])uri)oses was 
defeated. When the Legislature adjourned, the bat- 
tle was won, for succeeding Legislatures followed 
the example thus set and the school fund was un- 
molested. 

And so the schools were kept open, but, of course, 
they felt the strain of war. From this time onward 
their existence was a struggle heroically maintained 
by the superintendent. The remarkable feature is 
not that the system became impaired, but that it did 
not fail altogether. That it did not do so was due 
to the energy and zeal of Calvin H. Wiley; he re- 
fused to yield to discouragements, but labored in- 
cessantly for the betterment of the system. While 
the country lay bleeding in the iron grij) of war we 
find him planning a sj^stem of graded schools and 
actually getting a bill for their establishment 
through the House of Commons. It was also re- 
ported favorably by the Senate Committee, but had 
to be tabled, because of the pressure of more urgent 
business. The task before Dr. Wiley was more than 
human ability could cope with successfully. Diffi- 



112 OF North Carolina 

culties increased daily. The attention of the people 
was attracted from the ordinary affairs of life by 
the novelty and the suffering of war. Many thought 
it best to suspend the schools altogether. It was 
hard to get text-books. It was hard to get capable 
officials. It was hard to get teachers. In spite of 
all these difficulties, the report of 1863 shows 50,000 
children in the common schools. Referring to this 
fact, Wiley says : 

"The future historian of this stirring age will not 
fail to find evidences of the moral energy which this 
fact implies; for he will see that these schools had 
to be chiefly supplied with books written and print- 
ed in the State after the commencement of the revo- 
lution and in face of incredible difficulties, that they 
were all regularly visited by a State Journal of 
Education at a time when periodical literature was 
at a low ebb, and that educational associations still 
held their meetings, and still discussed plans for 
popular improvement."! 

"The present generation does not need to be told 
that it was hard to keep up a general educational 
system in any part of the Confederate States of 
America during the year 1863 . . . and it is, there- 
fore, a subject of devout gratitude to me to be 
able to announce that our common schools still live 
and are still full of glorious promise. Through all 
this dark night of storm their cheerful radiance has 
been seen on every hill and in every valley of our 
dear old State; and while the whole continent reels 
with the shock of terrible and ruthless war, cover- 
ing the face of nature with ruin and desolation, 

1. Report for 1863, 7 Leg. Doc. 1863. 



OF North Carolina 113 

there are here scattered through the wildnerness, 
hundreds of humming hives, where thousands of 
youthful minds are busily learning those peaceful 
arts which, under the blessing of God, are to pre- 
serve our civilization and to aid in perpetuating the 
liberty and independence for which this generation 
is manfully contending. This prospect more than 
repays all the toils, anxieties, and vigils of those to 
whose keeping is committed the great moral trust; 
and if the labors, denials, and res])onsibilities of 
those who nurse our educational system are unno- 
ticed in this stirring and martial age, they have in 
their own hearts a consolation infinitely more valu- 
able than any reward the world can confer."^ 

But the end was drawing near. The distressing 
condition of the people and the de})reciation of the 
currency made it almost impossible to continue the 
schools. Dr. Wiley never for an instant relaxed his 
energy, but the task was beyond the power of man, 
and with the close of the war the schools went down 
for lack of funds. The superintendent was in his 
oflSce in the capitol when the surrender of General 
Joseph E. Johnston was announced to him, April 
26, 1865. Even then he did not cease from his la- 
bors. He retained his office until October 19th, when 
b}' an ordinance of the constitutional convention all 
offices held on April 26, 1865, were declared vacant. 
And in 1866 the office of superintendent was abol- 
ished for the want of funds to meet the expenses. 

With his going out of office Dr. Wiley closed his 
official connection with the common school system, 
though he never lost active interest in educational 

1. Ibid, 3-4. 



114 ANTE-i;i.r.LUM Builders 

matters. He had given the best years of his life to 
the cause, and surely no man ever laid down his 
work with a better right to the gratitude of contem- 
poraries and of posterity. 

After the close of the war a new system of public 
schools was built up in North Carolina upon the old 
foundation laid by Dr. Wiley. In 187G he was asked 
to become the candidate for the superintendeucy of 
public instruction, but having recently been or- 
dained as a minister of the gospel, he declined on 
the ground that his sacred calling prevented. He 
interested himself, however, in the establishment 
and organization of the city schools of Winston, 
where he made his home during the last years of 
his life. His voice and pen were given to the cause, 
and when established he was called to the chairman- 
ship of the first Board of Commissioners. This place 
he held till his death, January 11, 1887. 

The fame of his services is limited neither by 
State boundaries nor by the lapse of j^ears. His 
reputation was national, and his school system was 
recognized as one of the best in the United States. 
At the National Convention of Educators held in 
Cincinnati in August, 1858, Dr. Wiley was on the 
program as ''one of the distinguished educators who 
would address the convention" along with Horace 
Mann. He received an invitation to visit the Legis- 
lature of Georgia to aid in preparing a system of 
schools similar to those he had established in North 
Carolina. He could not go, and he was then urged 
to prepare an essay on the subject, to be read to the 
Legislature. The Boston (Massachusetts) Post of 
May 1, 1856, says that Dr. Wiley's report for 1855 is 
''written with abilitv and shows that Mr. Wilev has 



OF North Carolina 115 

largeness of views and a zeal and energy in the 
duties of his office which eminently fit him to fill the 
responsible position which he now occupies." Since 
his death, one of the school buildings in the city of 
Raleigh has been given his name. In the city of 
Winston the school children have erected a hand- 
some monument to his memory, and but recently 
the thousands of school children of North Carolina, 
contributing each a penny, have presented to the 
State a handsome marble bust which will preserve 
his features for succeeding generations. 

There have been greater men in the history of 
North Carolina than Calvin H. Wiley, men of more 
pre-eminent abilities, men of greater originality of 
thought, men of greater powers for arousing their 
fellow men; but there has been no man in our his- 
tory who displayed a more unselfish devotion to a 
great cause, who advanced its interests with greater 
energy, or who achieved for it a more distinctive 
success, and no man who better deserves those evi- 
dences of approval and gratitude which mankind 
from the earliest dawn of history have erected in 
honor of the distinguished dead. I do not know 
how a man's work in the world is to be weighed and 
measured if it be not by its contributions to the sum 
total of those achievements which go to make up our 
civilization. If these contributions be for the per- 
manent upbuilding of civilization, the work de- 
serves to be called a great work, and the man who 
does it a useful man in his day and generation. 
Measured by these standards, are we not justified 
in giving Calvin H. Wiley a foremost place among 
the ''Ante-Bellum Builders of North Carolina?" 



John Motley Morehead' 



Along the line of the North Carolina Railroad, 
from its eastern terminus at Goldsboro to its west- 
ern terminus at Charlotte, lie eleven counties em- 
bracing six thousand square miles of territory, now 
one of the most prosperous and productive regions 
in North Carolina. During the decade from 1840 
to 1850, perhaps no other State on the entire Atlan- 
tic seaboard could have exhibited a stretch of coun- 
try of equal area which presented to the patriotic 
citizen so discouraging a prospect or so hopeless an 
outlook. Such a citizen traversing this region would 
have found public roads and methods of travel and 
transportation that were primitive when George 
III. claimed the allegiance of the American colonies. 
Delays, inconveniences, and discomforts were the 
least of the evils that beset the traveler who en- 



See also Connor, R. D. W. : "John Motley Morehead; 
Architect and Builder of Public Works." Publications 
of the North Carolina Historical Commission, Bulle- 
tin No. 12. Smith, C. Alphonso: "John Motley More- 
head," Biog. Hist, of N. C. II, 250-59, also printed in 
South Atlantic Quarterly, V. I. Kerr, John: "Oration 
on the Life and Character of John M. Morehead;" In 
Memoriam of John M. Morehead, Raleigh, 1S68 ; Scott, 
William Lafayette: "Tribute to the Genius and Worth 
of John M. Morehead," Ibid. Wooten, Council, "Gov- 
ernor Morehead," Charlotte Daily Observer, Sept. 30, 
1901. 



OP North Carolina 117 

trusted life and limbs to the public couveyances of 
that period. The cost of transportation was so 
great that the profits of one-half the planters' crops 
were consumed in getting the other half to market, 
and hundreds of them found it profitless to produce 
more than their own families could use. In 1853 a 
traveler, within thirty miles of the State Capitol, 
saw "three thousand barrels of an article worth a 
dollar and a half a barrel in New York, thrown 
away, a mere heap of useless offal, because it would 
cost more to transport it than it would be worth."i 
Under such conditions there could be, of course, 
no commerce, and without commerce no markets. 
Such commerce as the produce of the fertile valleys 
and plateaus of the Piedmont section created found 
its way to the markets of Virginia and South Caro- 
lina; and among the jjeople who dwelt west of 
Greensboro, declared Governor Morehead in 1842, 
*'Cheraw, Camden, Columbia, . . . Augusta, and 
Charleston are much more familiarly known than 
even Fayetteville and Raleigh."^ In all the region 
from Goldsboro to Charlotte, Raleigh, then a strag- 
gling country village, was the only town of sufficient 
importance to be noted in the United States census 
of 1850. This section, now the heart of the manu- 
facturing region of the South, reported to the cen- 
sus takers of that year no other manufactures than 
a handful of "homemade" articles valued at $396,- 
473. The social and labor systems upon which the 
civilization of the Stale was founded confined the 



1. Olmsted: A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, 1853- 

1854, I., 369. 

2. Annual Message to the Legislature. Journal, :> "42-43, 409. 



118 Ante-Bellum Builders 

energies of tlie people almost exclusively to agricul- 
ture, yet their farming operations were so crude and 
unproductive that a traveler, commenting on the 
agriculture in the vicinity of Raleigh, found it "a 
mystery how a town of 2,500 inhabitants can obtain 
suflflcient supplies from it to exist.''^ This was not 
the view merely of an unsympathetic stranger. 
Calvin H. Wiley, attempting to arouse his fellow 
members of the Legislature of 1852 from their indif- 
ference and lethargy, after referring to the "mag- 
nificent capitol" in which they sat, exclaimed, "But 
what is the view from these porticoes, and what do 
we see as w^e travel hither? Wasted fields and de- 
caying tenements; long stretches of silent desola- 
tion with here and there a rudely cultivated farm 
and a tottering barn."^ 

Such was the view which Central North Carolina 
presented to the keen eyes of John M. Morehead 
when, in the closing days of 1840, he journeyed from 
Greensboro to Raleigh to assume his duties and re- 
sponsibilities as Chief Magistrate of the Common- 
wealth. As desolate as the prospect was, however, 
Morehead's foresight saw in it not a little to give 
him courage. He must have realized that North 
Carolina was standing at the turn of the road and 
that much depended on the wisdom and prudence 
with which he himself directed her choice of future 
routes. Four years before a new Constitution, pro- 
foundly affecting the political life of the State, had 
gone into operation, from which Morehead, and 



1. Olmsted: A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, 1,357. 

2. Speech in support of his Bill to create the office of Su- 

perintendent of Common Schools. 



OF NouTH Carolina 119 

other leaders who thouji^ht as he did, had prophesied 
great results for the upbuilding of tlie State. This 
new Constitution had paved the way for the work 
of a small group of constructive statesmen, of whom 
Morehead was now the chosen leader, who were 
destined to direct and lead the public thought of 
North Carolina during the (piarter century from 
1835 to 18G0. 

Among these men two distinct types of genius 
were represented. On the one hand there were the 
dreamers — men who, like Archibald D. Murphey, 
had the powder of vision to see what the future held 
in store for their country, who wrote and spoke 
forcibly of what they foresaw, but lacked the power 
to convince men of the practicability of their vis- 
ions. On the other hand there were the so-called 
practical men — men who knew well enough how to 
construct what other men had planned, but lacked 
the power of vision necessary to see beyond the com- 
mon everyday affairs that surrounded and engrossed 
them. Once in an age appears that rare individual, 
both architect and contractor, both poet and man 
of action, to whom is given both the power to dream 
and the power to execute. Such men write them- 
selves deep in their country's annals and make the 
epochs of history. 

In the history of North Carolina such a man was 
John M. Morehead. Those who have written and 
spoken of Governor Morehead heretofore have been 
chiefly impressed with his great practical wisdom, 
and this he certainly had as much as any other man 
in our history. As for myself, what most impresses 
me after a careful study of his life and works, is his 



120 Ante-Bellum Builders 

wonderful power of vision. He was our most vision- 
i\ry builder, our greatest practical dreamer. No 
other man of liis day had so clear a vision of the fu- 
ture to which North Carolina was destined, or did 
so much to bring about its realization as Governor 
Morehead. It is no exaggeration to say that we 
have not now in process of construction, and have 
not had since his day, a single great work of inter- 
nal improvement of which he did not dream and for 
which he did not labor. He dreamed of great lines 
of railroad binding together not only all sections of 
North Carolina, but connecting this State with 
every part of the American Union. He dreamed of 
a network of improved country roads leading from 
every farm in tlie State to all her markets. He 
dreamed of a great central highway, fed hj these 
roads, finding its origin in the waters of the Atlan- 
tic at Morehead City and finally losing itself in the 
clouds that hang about the crests of the Blue Ridge. 
He dreamed of the day when the channels of our 
rivers would be so dee]:)ened and widened that they 
could bear upon their waters our share of the com- 
merce of the world. He dreamed of an inland water- 
way connecting the harbor of Beaufort with the 
waters of Pamlico Sound and through the opening 
of Roanoke Inlet, affording a safe inland passage 
for coastwise vessels around the whitecaps of Cape 
Hatteras. He dreamed of the day when the flags 
of all nations might be seen floating from the mast- 
heads of their fleets riding at anchor in the harbors 
of Beaufort and Wilmington. He dreamed of a 
chain of mills and factories dotting every river-bank 
in the State and distributing over these highways 



OP North Carolina 121 

of commerce a variety of products bearing the brand 
of North Carolina manufacturers.! 

Such were his dreams, and the history of North 
Carolina during the last half-century is largely the 
story of their realization. It is this fact that gives 
to Morehead his unique place in our history. He 
had a distinguished political career, but his fame 
is not the fame of the office holder. Indeed, no other 
man in our history, save Charles B. Aycock alone, 
in so brief a public career, made so deep an impres- 
sion on the life of the State. The exidanation is 
simple. The public service of each was inspired by 
a genuine love of the State and consecrated to the 
accomi>lishment of a great purpose. The educa- 
tional and intellectual development which Aycock 
stimulated was based on the material prosperity of 
which Morehead laid the foundations. It is, then, 
his service as architect and builder of great and en- 
during public works that gives to Morehead his 
distinctive place in our annals, and it is of this 
service that I shall speak today. 

The simple facts of Morehead's life may be quick- 
ly disposed of. He was born in Pittsylvania County, 
Virginia, July 4, 1796, son of John Morehead and 
Obedience Motley. In 1798 his parents moved to 
Rockingham County, North Carolina, where John 
grew to manhood. He was prepared for college 
partly under the private instruction of Thomas 
Settle and partly at the Academy of Dr. David Cald- 
well, near Greensboro. He afterwards entered the 
University of North Carolina, from which he was 



1. See his messages to the Legislature and other public 
addresses. 



122 Antb-Bellum Builders 

graduated in 1817. In his junior year he was ap- 
pointed a tutor in the University. From 1828 to 
1866 he served on the Board of Trustees, and in 
1849 was President of the Alumni Association. 
Morehead was the sixth alumnus of the University 
to become Governor of North Carolina. After his 
graduation from the University he studied law un- 
der Archibald D. Murphey. In 1819, receiving his 
license to practice, he settled at Wentworth, county 
seat of Rockingham County, where he lived until 
his marriage to Miss Ann Eliza Lindsay, eldest 
daughter of Col. Robert Lindsay, of Guilford Coun- 
ty. He then removed to Greensboro which continued 
to be his home during the rest of his life. 

In 1821 he represented Rockingham County in the 
House of Commons; in 1826, 1827 and 1858 he rep- 
resented Guilford County in the House, and in 1860 
in the Senate. He was one of the delegates from 
Guilford in the Convention of 1835. In 1840 he was 
elected Governor, and in 1842 was re-elected. He 
was the permanent presiding officer of the National 
Whig Convention, which met at Philadelphia, June 
7, 1848, and nominated General Zachary Taylor for 
the Presidency. By the act establishing the North 
Carolina Insane Asylum he was designated as 
Chairman of the Board of Commissioners to locate 
and build the asylum. In 1857 he was elected Presi- 
dent of the association organized for the purpose of 
erecting at Greensboro a monument to General Na- 
thanael Greene. He was one of the delegates from 
North Carolina to the Peace Congress at Washing- 
ton in 1861. In 1861-'62 he was a member of the 
Provisional Congress of the Confederate States. He 
died at Greensboro, August 27, 1866. 



OP North Carolina 123 

When Morohead began his ])nblic career the pre- 
vailing political thought of the State was, in mod- 
ern political vernacular, reactionary. Representa- 
tion, as we have seen, was distributed equally among 
the counties, regardless of poi)ulation. East of 
Raleigh, where the institution of slavery was most 
strongly entrenched, thirty-five counties with a com- 
bined population of 294,312, sent to the General 
Assembly sixteen more Commoners and eight more 
senators than twenty-seven counties west of Raleigh 
which had a combined ])opulation of 50,205 more 
people. A pro})erty qualification was requisite for 
membership in the General Assembly and inasmuch 
as all State officials were elected by the Legislature, 
not by the people directly. Property, not Men, con- 
trolled the government. The theory of Property 
was that the best government is that which governs 
least. Adherents of this school of politics thought, 
therefore, that government had fulfilled its mission 
when it had preserved order, i)uiiished crime, and 
kept down the rate of taxation. Hut another school 
of political thought, originating in the counties 
west of Raleigh, where the institution of slavery 
had not secured so strong a foothold, was now be- 
ginning to make itself heard. Its adherents favored 
a constitutional convention to revise the basis of 
representation, to give to the people the right to 
elect their chief magistrates, and in other respects 
to make the government popular in practice as well 
as in form ; and they advocated internal improve- 
ments, geological surveys, the conservation of re- 
sources, asylums for the insane, public schools, 
schools for the deaf and dumb and for the blind, 
and numerous other progressive measures which all 



124 Antb-Bbllum Builders 

right thinking people now acknowledge to be gov- 
ernmental in their nature. These men were the Pro- 
gressives of their day. 

Morehead found his place among these Progres- 
sives. As a member of the General Assembly he was 
among the foremost in advocating a constitutional 
convention. He supijorted measures for the build- 
ing of good roads, for the digging of canals, for 
the improvement of inland navigation, for drainage 
of swamps, and for railroad surveys.^ He opposed 
a bill to prevent the education of negroes, moved the 
appointment of a select committee on the coloniza- 
tion of slaves, introduced a bill providing for their 
emancipation under certain conditions, and dis- 
played so much interest in measures for the amelior- 
ation of the conditions of the slaves that his oppo- 
nents, when he became a candidate for Governor, 
charged him with being at heart an Abolitionist.^ 
He endeavored to secure the appropriation of funds 
to enable Murphey to make his collection of material 
for the preservation of the history of North Caro- 
lina and took a deep interest in all measures for the 



1. In the Legislature of 1821 he voted with the minority 

for a resolution providing for a Constitutional Con- 
vention; for a bill "to provide an additional fund for 
internal improvements;" in 1826 for a bill to improve 
the navigation of the Cape Fear below Wilmington, 
and for a similar bill in 1827, for the survey of a route 
for a railroad from New Bern through Raleigh to the 
western counties. 

2. The Raleigh Standard called him an Abolitionist be- 

cause as a member of the Legislature he "drew a 
report against the proposition of Mr. Stedman, from 
Chatham, forbidding the instruction of slaves." 
Quoted in the Raleigh Register, Jan. 3, 1840. 



OF North Carolina 125 

promotion of public education.^ In 1827, while he 
was diairman of the Committee on Education, a bill 
came before his committee to repeal the Act of 1825 
which had created the Literary Fund ''for the estab- 
lishment of common schools." Morehead submitted 
the report of the committee, in which he said : 

"Your committee believe that the passage of that 
act [to establish common schools] must have been 
greeted by every philanthropist and friend of civil 
liberty as the foundation on which was to rest the 
future happiness of our citizens and the perpetuity 
of our political institutions. . . . From the very 
nature of our civil institutions, the people must act; 
it is wisdom and policy to teach them to act from 
the lights of reason, and not from the blind impulse 
of deluded feeling. . . . Independent of any political 
influences that general education might have, your 
committee are of the opinion that any State or sov- 
ereign, having the means at command, are morally 
criminal if they neglect to contribute to each citi- 
zen or subject that individual usefulness and happi- 
ness which arises from a well cultured understand- 
ing. . . . Your committee cannot conceive a nobler 
idea than that of the genius of our country, hover- 
ing over the tattered son of some miserable hovel, 
leading his infant but gigantic mind in the paths 
of useful knowledge, and pointing out to his noble 
ambition the open way by which talented merit may 



3. He introduced a resolution to advance money from the 
Literary Fund to be used "in aiding Arcliibald D. 
Murphey, of Orange County, in writing and publish- 
ing the History of this State." 



126 Ante-Bellum Builders 

reach the highest honors and preferments of our 
government." 

The committee, accordingly, unanimously recom- 
mended the rejection of the bill to discontinue the 
Literary Fund.^ The recommendation was accepted, 
the bill was lost, the Literary Fund was saved, and 
the foundation upon which our common school sys- 
tem was afterwards built was preserved intact. 

In the Convention of 1835, in which he represented 
Guilford County, Morehead supported the amend- 
ments offered to the Constitution designed to dem- 
ocratize the State Government. Two of these amend- 
ments in particular have had a far-reaching influ- 
ence on our history. One of them placed represen- 
tation in the House of Commons on a basis of Fed- 
eral population ; the other took away from the Leg- 
islature the election of the Governor and gave it to 
the people. To this latter change we may trace the 
origin of two of the most important political insti- 
tutions of our own day— the party State Conven- 
tion and the pre-election canvass of the State by the 
nominees for State offices. 

The first party State Convention ever held in 
North Carolina was the Whig Convention which 
met in Raleigh, November 12, 1839, and nominated 



1. Coon: Public Education in North Carolina, 1790-1840, I., 
376. 



OF North Carolina 127 

John M. Moreliend for Governor.* There was a 
marked contrast between this convention and the 
last political convention held in North Carolina.^ 
They were typical of the political conditions of the 
two eras in which they were held. The latter with 
its more than one thousand cheering, shouting, de- 
claiming delegates, uncontrolled and uncontrollable, 
was truly representative of the aggressive direct 
democracv of the twentieth centurv. The former 



1. Ex-Gov. John Owen, delegate from Bladen, presided. A 

"General Committee of Thirteen," one from each Con- 
gressional District, was appointed "to take into con- 
sideration the purposes for which the Convention had 
assembled" and to report thereon. November 13th, 
this Committee reported, among other resolutions, 
the following: "Resolved, That having been inspired 
with a deep and lively sense of the eminent practical 
vigor, sound Republican principles, unblemished pub- 
lic and private virtues, ardent patriotism and decided 
abilities of John M. Morehead, of the County of Guil- 
ford, we do accordingly recommend him to our fellow 
citizens as a fit successor to our present enlightened 
Chief Magistrate, Governor Dudley." — Adopted unani- 
mously. The platform of the Convention favored: 
(1) Economy in government; (2) Reform in the rev- 
enue system; (3) Reduction in the number of govern- 
ment employees; (4) Selection of government em- 
ployees "witiiout discrimination of parties;" (5) An 
amendment to the Federal Constitution to abolish the 
Electoral College; (6) One term of four years for the 
President; (7) A National Bank; (S) A division of 
the proceeds of public lands among the States on a 
basis of Federal population; (9) Public Education; 
(10) Strict Construction of the Constitution. It op- 
posed: (1) Jackson's Spoil System; (2) Appointment 
of members of Congress to Federal offices during 
their terms in Congress; (3) Making judicial appoint- 
ments for partisan reasons; (4) Interference of Fed- 
eral Officers in elections; (5) Protective tariff; (6) 
The Federal Government's making internal improve- 
ments "except such as may be stampt with the na- 
tional character;" (7) The Sub-Treasury Scheme; 
(8) Federal interference with slavery. 

2. Reference is to the State Democratic Convention of 1912. 



128 Ante-Bbllum Builders 

with its ninety-one sober, orderly, deliberative gen- 
tlemen of the old school, thoroughly responsive to 
the mallet of their chairman, was just as truly rep- 
resentative of the staid, self-restrained, representa- 
tive democracy of the early nineteenth century. 

Morehead's election as Governor followed a cam- 
paign that is memorable in the history of North 
Carolina as the first in which candidates for public 
oflflce ever made a canvass of the State. But in other 
respects also his election and inauguration as Chief 
Executive marks a turning point in our history. He 
was the first governor to sit in the present State 
Capitol, in itself typical of the new era then dawn- 
ing upon the State; and, what is more important 
still, he was among the first of our Governors to dis- 
card the old laissez faire policy which his predeces- 
sors had followed since the Revolution, and to come 
into oflice with a distinct program in view. This 
program he outlined in very general terms in his 
Inaugural Address before the members of the Gen- 
eral Assembly, in the course of which he said: 

'*I shall be happy to co-operate with you in bring- 
ing into active operation all the elements of great- 
ness and usefulness with which our State is so 
abundantly blessed. Other states have outstripped 
us in the career of improvements, and in the develop- 
ment of their natural resources, but North Carolina 
will stand a favorable comparison with most of her 
sister states in her natural advantages — her great 
extent of fertile soil, her great variety of production, 
her exhaustless deposits of mineral wealth, her ex- 
traordinary water-power, inviting to manufacturers, 
all, all combine to give her advantages that few 
other states possess. Whatever measures you may 



OF NouTH Carolina 129 

adopt to eiuonrage agricultuie and to induce the 
husbandman while he toils and sweats to hope that 
his labors will be duly rewarded ; whatever measures 
you may adoi>t to facilitate commerce and to aid 
industry in all departments of life to reap its full 
rewards, will m(>et with my cordial approbation. . . . 
Tt is equally our duty, fellow citizens, to attend to 
our moral and intellectual cultivation. ... Tt is to 
our common schools, in which every child can receive 
the rudiments of an education, that our attention 
should be mainly directed. Our system is yet in its 
infancy; it will require time and experience to give 
to it its greatest perfection. . . . T doubt not, in due 
time, the legislative wisdom of the State will per- 
fect the system as far as human sagacity can do it. 
And no part of my official duty will be performed 
with more pleasure than that part which may aid in 
bringing about that happy result.''^ 

But we should not expect a man of Governor 
Morehead's great practical wisdom to content him- 
self with general observations. To reduce these gen- 
eral observations into a concrete, practical system 
was the work of his first two years in the Governor's 
office, and when the Legislature of 1842 met he was 
ready with a message outlining a complete system 
of internal improvements. ^ His scheme embraced 
the further extension of the railroad lines already 
built in the State, the improvement of our rivers 
and harbors, the construction of extensive lines of 
turnpikes, and the linking of all three together in 
one general system of transportation. One of the 

1. Raleigh Register, Jan. 5, 1841. 

2. Journals of Legislature, 1842-43, pp. 405-22; Also Public 

Documents, 1842-43, Doc. No. 1. 



130 Ante-Bellum Builders 

ablest public documents in our history, this message, 
for its practical bearing on the problems of our own 
day, still repays a careful study. With reference to 
the great inland waterway now nearing completion, 
of which the connection between Pamlico Sound and 
Beaufort Harbor forms an important link, he said: 
"Turning our attention to the eastern part of the 
State, two improvements said to be practicable, as- 
sume an importance that renders them national in 
their character. I allude to the opening of Eoanoke 
Inlet and the connection of Pamlico Sound by a ship 
canal with Beaufort harbor. Frequent surveys of 
the first of these proposed imjirovements . . . estab- 
lishes the feasibility of this work. The advantages 
arising from this improvement to our commerce are 
too obvious to need pointing out. But the view to 
be taken of its vast importance is in the protection 
it will afford to our shipping and the lives of our 
seamen. The difficulty and dangers so often en- 
countered at Ocracoke Inlet render the connection 
between Pamlico Sound and Beaufort harbor of vast 
im]>ortance to the convenience and security of our 
commerce and shipping. It will be an extension of 
that inland navigation, so essential to us in time of 
war, and give access to one of the safest harbors on 
our coast, and one from which a vessel can be quick- 
er at sea than from any other, perhaps, on the con- 
tinent. In these improvements the commerce of the 
nation is interested ; it becomes the duty of the na- 
tion to make thein, if they be practicable and proper- 
I therefore recommend that you bring the attention 
of Congress to the subject in the manner most likely 
to effect the object. . . . We should assert a continual 
claim to our riffht to have this work effected bv the 



OF North Carolina 131 

general government. . . . You would be saved the 
trouble of this appeal if the nation could witness 
one of those storms so frequent on our coast — could 
witness the war of elements which rage around Hat- 
teras and the dangers which dance about Ocracoke 
— could witness the noble daring of our pilots and 
the inefifectual but manly struggles of our seamen — 
could see our coast fringed with wrecks and our 
towns filled with the widows and orphans of our 
gallant tars. Justice and Imnianity would extort 
what we now ask in vain." 

Of the conditions of transportation and travel in 
the central section of the State, he said: 

"I would respectfully invite your attention to the 
public highways generally. . . . From Fayetteville, 
the highest point of good navigation, westward to 
the Buncombe Turnpike, a distance of some two 
hundred and fift}' or three hundred miles, what navi- 
gable stream, railroad, turnpike, or macadamized 
highway gives to the laborer facilities of transporta- 
tion? None! Literally none! This vast extent of 
territory, reaching from the Blue Ridge in the west 
to the alluvial region in the east, and extending 
across the whole State, it is believed, will compare 
with any spot upon the globe for the fertility of its 
soil, the variety of its productions, the salubrity of 
its climate, the beauty of its landscapes, the rich- 
ness of its mines, the facilities for manufactures and 
the intelligence and moral worth of its population. 
Can another such territory, combining all these ad- 
vantages, be found upon the face of the whole earth, 
so wholly destitute of natural or artificial facilities 
for transportation? 



132 Ante-Bellum Builders 

''What scheme, that is practicable," he asked, 
"will afford the desired facilities?" And in answer 
to this query he made two recommendations. 

''The remedy for these evils is believed to be in 
good turnpikes. ... I therefore recommend that a 
charter be granted to make a turnpike road from 
the city of Raleigh to some point westward selected 
with a view to its ultimate continuance to the ex- 
treme west. . . . Should this road be continued to 
Waynesboro [now Goldsboro], which might be done 
at comparatively small expense, the farmer would 
have the choice of markets, of Wilmington by the 
railroad, or New Bern by the river Neuse." 

Further he recommended : 

"That a charter be granted to make a turnpike 
from Fayetteville to the Yadkin River at some point 
above the Narrows, or, if deemed more expedient, to 
some point on a similar road leading from Raleigh 
westward, thus giving the west the advantages of 
both markets. . . . Should this road ever reach the 
Yadkin, no doubt is entertained of its continuance 
across the Catawba westward — thus giving to this 
road the advantages which will arise from the navi- 
gation of these two noble rivers." 

Nearly seventy years were to pass before the State 
was ready for the execution of these plans, and it 
was left for the engineers of 1012 to realize what the 
statesman of 1812 had dreamed. A vaster work was 
waiting the constructive genius of Morehead. 

Turing his eyes further westward, Governor More- 
head foresaw the future development of the moun- 
tainous section of North Carolina. To make this 
region more interesting, he declared, we have only 
to make it more accessible, and continuing he said : 



OF NouTii Carolina 133 

"The sublimity and beauty of its niounlaJu scen- 
ery, the purity of its waters, the buoyancy and salu 
brity of its atmosphere, the fertility of its valleys, 
the verdure of its mountains, and, above all, its ener- 
getic, intelligent and hospitable inhabitants, make 
it an inviting portion of the State. . . . When good 
roads shall be established in that region, it is be- 
lieved the population will increase with rapidity, 
agriculture improve, grazing will be extended, and 
manufactures and the mechanic arts will flourish in 
a location combining so many advantages and in- 
viting their growth. The improved highways will 
be additional inducements to the citizens of other 
sections of our State to abandon their usual north- 
ern tours, or visits to the Virginia watering places, 
for a tour more interesting among our own moun- 
tains, much chea])er, and much more beautiful — a 
tour in which they will inspire health in every 
breath and drink in health at every draught." 

Governor JMorehead did not expect, indeed he did 
not desire that the General Assembly should pro- 
ceed to put all of his recommendations into imme- 
diate etlect. He realized only too well that such a 
procedure would require enormous outlays far be- 
yond the resources of the State, and he never forgot 
that debts contracted today must be paid tomorrow. 
Sufficient warning of the effects of such a course 
was not lacking. Many of the Southern and ^Vestern 
States embarking in wild and extravagant schemes 
of internal improvements had made such vast ex- 
penditures that their treasuries had become bank- 
rupt and their people oppressed with obligations 
which they could not meet; and to extricate them- 
selves they had resorted to the very simple but very 



134 Ante-Bellum Builders 

effective means of repudiation. If Governor More- 
head loved progress much, he detested repudiation 
more; and the most vigorous passage iu his message 
is that in which he warns the Legislature against 
such a course. Said he: 

"I would recommend that whatever schemes of ex- 
penditure you may embark in, you keep within the 
means at the command of the State; otherwise the 
people must be taxed more heavil}- or the State must 
contract a loan. The pressure of the times forbids 
the former — the tarnished honor of some of the 
States should make us, for the i^resent, decline the 
latter. . . . North Carolina has been jeered for slug- 
gishness and indolence, because she has chosen to 
guard her treasury and protect her honor by avoid- 
ing debt and promptly meeting her engagements. 
She has yielded to others the glory of their magnifi- 
cent expenditures and will yield to them all that 
glory which will arise from a repudiation of their 
contracts. In the language of one of her noblest 
sons, *It is better for her to sleep on in indolence 
and innocence than to wake up in infamy and 
treason.' " 

The schemes outlined in Morehead's message of 
1842 were laid before a Legislature controlled by the 
Democratic party, and the policy of that party was 
hostile to internal improvements. Morehead accord- 
ingly was forced to wait upon events for the consum- 
mation of his great schemes. In outlining these 
schemes he had given evidence of his extraordinary 
power of vision; the next few years were to bring 
him an opportunity to demonstrate his ability to 
transform his dreams into actual realities. This 
opportunity, for which he had so long waited, came 



OF North Carolina 185 

with the passage by the Legislature of 1840 of the 
act to cliaitei- "The Xoith Carolina Kailroad Com- 
pany." The history of this measure — the long and 
bitter contest between the East and the West over 
the proposed railroad from Charlotte to Danville, 
the statesmanlike compromise of its advocates in 
accepting the road from Charlotte to Goldsboro, the 
prolonged struggle and ultimate victory in the House 
of Commons, the dramatic scene in the Senate where- 
in Calvin Graves immolated his own personal ambi- 
tion on the altar of public duty — all this has been 
described so often that it is not necessary to repeat 
the story here. The act authorized the organization 
of a corporation with stock of |3,000,000, of which 
the State was to take |2,000,000 when private indi- 
viduals had subscribed |1,000,000 and actually paid 
in 1500,000. North Carolina had long stood at the 
turn of the road hesitatingly. By the passage of 
this act she finally made her decision. The enthusi- 
asm of Governor Morehead, who was not usually 
given to picturesque language, was too great for 
plain speech. "The passage of the act," he declared, 
''under which this company is organized was the 
dawning hope to North Carolina; the securing its 
charter was the rising sun of that hope; the com- 
pletion of the road will be the meridian glory of that 
hope, pregnant with the results that none living can 
divine."^ 

For the next five years, during which the private 
subscription of |1, 000,000 was secured, the charter 
obtained, the company organized, the route sur- 
veyed, and the road constructed, the dominant figure 

1. Report of the Directors of the North Carolina Railroad 
Co., Leg. Doc. 1850-51, Doc. No. 9. 



136 Ante-Bellum Builders 

in its history is the figure of John M. Morehead. In 
this period he performed his greatest service to the 
State and enrolled his name permanently among the 
builders of the Commonwealth. The experience of 
North Carolina in railroad building up to that time 
had not been encouraging. Both the Wilmington 
and Weldon and the Raleigh and Gaston railroads 
were bankrupt for the want of patronage. In the 
face of this fact, it was no slight achievement to 
raise a million dollars in North Carolina for an- 
other similar enterprise. Yet this is the task to 
which Governor Morehead now set himself. On June 
15, 1849, he presided over a great Internal Improve- 
ments Convention at Salisbury at which measures 
largely suggested by himself, were adopted for se- 
curing subscriptions to the stock. i Placed by this 
convention at the head of an executive committee to 
carry out these measures, he pushed them with a 
vigor, determination, and wisdom that aroused the 
enthusiasm of the whole State and inspired confi- 
dence in the enterprise. Speaking of his work at a 
convention held in Greensboro, November 30, 1849, 
in the interest of the road, the Greensboro Patriot 
declared that "the determined spirit of this distin- 
guished gentleman touched every heart in that as- 
sembly and awoke a feeling of enthusiasm and 
anxiety, deep, startling, and fervent as we have ever 
witnessed. "2 On March G, 1850, Morehead was able 
to announce to a convention at Hillsboro that only 



1. Raleigh Register, June 23, 1849. Similar conventions 

were held at Greensboro, Nov. 29, 1849; Raleigh Dec. 
15, 1849; Goldsboro in January, 1850; and Hillsboro 
in March, 1850. 

2. Quoted in the Raleigh Star, Dec. 5, 1849. 



OF North Carolina 137 

1100,000 remained to be taken to complete the pri- 
vate subscription, and then announced his willing- 
ness to be one of ten men to take the balance. Nine 
others promptly came forward, subscribed their pro- 
portionate part, and thus ensured the building of 
the road.i "It is worthy of remark," declared Major 
Walter Gwynn, the eminent engineer whose skill 
contributed so much to the coustructiou of the road, 
"that the whole amount was subscribed by indi- 
viduals, without aid of corporations, the largest 
subscription thus made to any public improvement 
in the Southern country." The editor of the Raleigh 
y^tar, announced the complotiou of the private sub- 
scription with the following comments: 

"We must be permitted to remark that the State 
owes much to that sterling man, Governor More- 
head, for success in this enterprise ; and that he who 
has heretofore been styled ''wheel horse" in this 
matter, may be justly entitled to the appellation of 
a "whole team." Whilst we pen these hasty lines, 
the deep-mouthed cannon is pealing forth from 
Union Square commemorative of this great deed for 
North Carolina. We are not of a very excitable 
disi)Osition, but we must confess that it makes our 
blood run quicker at every peal, so that we can 
scarcely restrain ourselves from responding to its 
notes, "Huzza! Huzza! for the railroad."^ 

On July 11, 1850, the private stockholders met at 
Salisbury and organized the company. The board 
of directors unanimously elected John M. Morehead 
president. He was continuously re-elected president 

1. Raleigh Star, March 20, 1850. 

2. Raleigh Star, March 6, 1850. 



138 Ante-Bellum Builders 

until 1855, when declining further election he was 
succeeded by Charles F. Fisher. During these five 
3'ears of President Morehead's administration the 
North Carolina Railroad, truly described as ''the 
greatest of all enterprises so far attempted by the 
State of North Carolina in the nature of a public or 
internal improvement," was constructed and opened 
to traffic. The surveys were commenced August 21, 
1850; on July 11, 1851, at Greensboro, in the pres- 
ence of an immense throng, ground for the laying of 
the rails was broken ;^ on January 29, 1856, the road 
was ready for cars from Goldsboro to Charlotte, a 
distance of two hundred and twenty-three miles. In 
his last report to the board of directors. Engineer 
Gwynn said that the breaking of ground for this 
railroad "may be justly regarded as an event which 
will ever be memorable in the annals of North Caro- 
lina — an era which marks her engaging with earn- 
estness in honorable competition with her sister 
states in the great work of internal improvement 
which is to raise the State to that rank which the 
advantages of her situation entitle her to hold," and 
continuing, he said : 

''From this memorable day, July 11, 1851, there 
has been no faltering or despondency ; all have been 
united heart and hand in the great undertaking; 
the whole State, her entire people, catching the en- 
thusiasm which it engendered, have come forth in 
their might and majesty battling in the cause of in- 
ternal improvements, those heretofore signalized as 
laggards now pressing forward in the front rank. . . . 
The contractors on the North Carolina Railroad 

1. For an interesting account of this ceremony see Raleigh 
Register, July 16, 1851. 



OF North Carolina 139 

were all stockholders, and with ouly two or three 
exceptions entirely destitute of experience in the 
work they undertook ; they commenced their con- 
tracts very genoi-ally in January, 1852, and on the 
first of January, 1853, witliout the aid of a single 
dollar from the treasury of the company, but rely- 
ing entirelj' upon their own credit and means, their 
united labor amounted to $500,000, which, carried 
to the credit of their stock subscription, fulfilled the 
second condition of the subscription on the part of 
the Stale and brought her in as a partner in the 
great enterprise. This (coupling the subscription 
of a million dollars by individuals, chiefly farmers, 
and working out a half million on their own re- 
sources) is an achievement unprecedented in the an- 
nals of the public works of this or any other country, 
and wherever known (and it ought to be published 
everywhere) will disabuse the public mind and vin- 
dicate the energy, enterprise and industry of the 
citizens of the State. I have repeatedly said public- 
ly, and perceiving no impropriety in it, I avail my- 
self of this occasion to say that in my experience, 
now^ exceeding thirty years, I have not found on any 
public work with which I have been connected, a set 
of contractors more reliable than those with whom 
I have had to deal on the North Carolina Railroad, 
and none with whom my intercourse has been so 
pleasant and agreeable." 

It is no small tribute to the wisdom and construc- 
tive genius of President Morehead to be able to say 
that, of all the contracts which, as president of the 
road, he had to make, the only one about which any 
controversy ever arose, or any charge of favoritism 
was ever made, was one which the State Directors, 



140 Ante-Bellum Builders 

for partisan political purposes, took out of his 
hands and referred for settlement to a committee of 
their own choosing. 

This controversy was an incident in one of the 
most memorable events in Governor Morehead's 
career. Before the passage of the act to charter 
the North Carolina Railroad Company, the people 
of the central section of the State had asked the 
Legislature to charter a company to build a railroad 
from Charlotte to Danville, Va. The people of the 
East opposed this charter, and in 1849 its advocates 
accepted in its place the railroad from Charlotte to 
Goldsboro. Nearly ten years passed, therefore, be- 
fore anything more was heard of the Danville con- 
nection. In 1858 the advocates of the Danville con- 
nection again brought forward their scheme, and 
asked for a charter for a company to build a road, 
without any aid from the State, to connect the North 
Carolina Railroad at Greensboro with the Richmond 
and Danville at Danville. The bill was introduced 
in the House of Commons in 1858 by Francis L. 
Simpson, of Rockingham, but everybody understood 
that it was in reality Governor Morehead's bill and 
he was its principal champion. The members from 
the East, supported by the Raleigh Register and the 
Raleigh Standard, immediately assailed the project 
as inimical to the interests of the North Carolina 
Railroad. The debate continued several days. It 
was participated in by several of the ablest debaters 
in the State, and was extended to embrace the whole 
subject and history of the State's policy toward rail- 
roads. Governor Morehead's administration of the 
affairs of the North Carolina Railroad was bitterly 
assailed. He was charged with mismanagement and 



OF North Carolina 141 

with a breach of I'aith and betrayal of the interests 
of tlie Stale, his oi»ponents chiiiiiiii"!, tliat, while 
S(>liciting subscriptions to stock in (he North Caro- 
lina Kaihoad (%)ni}>any, he had expressly promised 
to abandon forever all advocacy of the Danville con- 
nection. No more formidable attack, perhaps, has 
ever been made on any public man in the history of 
North Carolina. Arrayed against him, besides the 
two newspapers mentioned, were Robert R. Bridgers, 
of h]dgecombe; W. T. Dortch. of Wayne; Pride Jones 
and John W. Norw^ood, of Orange, and Dennis D. 
Ferebee, of Camden, and others scarcely less distin- 
guished for ability. Morehead's defence is still re- 
membered as one of the really great forensic tri- 
um]>hs in our history. Mr. J. S. F. Baird, who rep- 
resented liuncondie county in that Legislature, and 
who was not of Governor Morehead's political faith, 
under date of April 29, 1912, writes of the contest : 

"After the lapse of fifty-four years it is impossible 
for me to recall many of the incidents of the debate, 
but this much I do remember, that Colonel Bridgers' 
attack on Governor Morehead was futile and did the 
Governor no harm, for he vindicated himself in the 
most thorough manner.'' 

Tw^o other members w^ho themselves participated 
in the debate have left their testimony. John Kerr, 
of Rockingham county, said of Morehead's defence: 

"Never w^as a more brilliant victory won than he 
achieved that day. His assailants were driven from 
all their positions, were pursued and routed, 'horse, 
foot and dragoons.' . . . They were strong men and 
the House felt the shock of battle while the conflict 
lasted. But when he closed his defence his assail- 
ants bore the air of deep dejection and discomfiture. 



142 Ante-Bbllum Builders 

The House was enraptured with the display of 
power on the part of Governor Morehead, and no 
further charges were heard against him." Hon. 
Thomas Settle said: "For a time the attack seemed 
overwhelming, and Governor Morehead's friends 
feared that he would not be able to repel it. For 
five days he sat and received it in silence, but when 
he arose and as he proceeded with his defence, friend, 
foe, and everybody else was struck with amazement. 
We could scarcely realize that any man possessed 
such powers of argument and eloquence. His vin- 
dication was so complete that his assailants openly 
acknowledged it." Mr. C. S. Wooten, who did not 
hear the debate but remembers the impression it 
created in the State at the time, says of Morehead's 
effort : "I know of but one other instance in Ameri- 
can history that can parallel Morehead's fight and 
that was when Benton, solitary and alone, made hi-, 
fight against Calhoun, Clay and Webster in favor o!' 
his resolution expunging from the records of the 
Senate the resolution censuring General Jackson. 
There never has been such another instance in the 
history of the State of such moral courage, such 
heroic firmness, and such a grand exhibition of iroa 
nerve." In the heat of the contest the Danville con- 
nection was almost forgotten in the attack on Moro- 
head. The former was defeated by a strictly ac- 
tional vote; but Morehead achieved, according to a!i 
testimony, both contemporary and subsequent, i 
great personal triumph. 

The North Carolina Kailroad was only one link 
in the great State system which Morehead contem- 
plated. As he himself expressed it this system wa^ 
to include "one great leading trunk line of railwav 



OF North Carolina 143 

Irom Uie ma^^uiliceut luirbor of Beaufort to the 
Tennessee line.'' Writing in 1866, he attributed the 
conception of tliis scheme to Josej))! Caldwell and 
Judge (jaston, adding: 

-Charter after charter, by the influence of these 
great men, was granted to effect the work, but the 
gigantic work was thought to be too much for the 
limited means the State and her citizens could then 
command, and the charters remain monuments of 
their wisdom and our folly, or inability to carry 
them out. A more successful plan it is hoped was 
finally adopted — to do this great work by sections. 
The North Carolina Railroad . . . was the first 
[section] undertaken."^ 

The other sections were to be built between Golds 
boro and Beaufort and between Salisbury and the 
Tennessee boundary. In accordance with this plan 
the Legislature, in 1853, incorporated "The Atlantic 
and North Carolina Railroad Company," and "The 
North Carolina and Western Railroad Company," 
to which Governor Morehead referred as "the con- 
templated extensions of the North Carolina Rail- 
road." Immediately after the passage of these acts. 
Governor Reid ordered President Morehead and the 
directors of the North Carolina Railroad to make 
the necessary surveys. In an open letter to the 
Greensboro Patriot, Governor Morehead said of this 
order : 

"I desire to give this pleasing intelligence to the 
friends of these enterprises, through your valuable 
paper, with an .assurance that the work will be com 



1. Letter to the Stockholders of the North Carolina Rail- 
road Co. Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual 
Meeting, July 17, 1866. 



144 Antb-Bbllum Buildbrs 

raeuced at as eail}^ a day as practicable. . . . Not a 
moment is to be lost. The deep, deep regret is that 
these extensions are not now in full iirogress of con- 
struction. The giant strides of improvement around 
us should arouse us to action. The ignominious and 
pusillanimous complaint that Nature has done so 
little for us is a libel upon the old dame. Let us see 
if it is not. . . . We have at the eastern terminus of 
one of these extensions one of the finest harbors, at 
Beaufort, for all commercial purposes, on the whole 
Atlantic coast. And if the improvements at the 
mouth of Cape Fear shall succeed, as it is hoped 
they will, we shall have another port surpassed by 
few, if any, in the South. . . . But it may be asked, 
what commerce have we to require such a port as 
Beaufort? Let the answer be, the commerce of the 
world. Look at the location of this port — placed at 
the end of the North Carolina coast, which project- 
like a promontory into the Atlantic, midway an i 
within sight of the great line of navigation between 
the North and the South, and within thirty minutes' 
sail of the ocean. Nature made it for a stopping 
])lace of commerce — the halfway house between tl't 
North and the South, where steamers may get their 
supplies of anthracite, semi-bituminous and bitumi- 
nous coal. . . . But let us take a western view of the 
extensions. The road running from Beaufort alony: 
the Central Railroad [the North Carolina Railroad] 
and to the Tennessee line and thence along the 
lines already in progress of construction to Mem- 
phis will not vary one degree from a due west course. 
Extend the same line westward (and I predict it 
will surely be done) to the city of San Francisco, 
which is to become the great emporium of the East 



OF North Carolina 145 

India trade, and who can doubt that the trade of 
the Mississipj)! Valley, as well as that of the East 
Indies and China will crowd our ports?"! 

Under Morehead's supervision, the work of both 
the Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad, and the 
Western North Carolina Railroad was inaugurated. 
On June 17, 1858, the former was completed and 
ready for trains from Goldsboro to Beaufort Har- 
bor; and a few months thereafter found trains run- 
ning over the latter to within four miles of Morgan- 
ton, while the entire route to the Tennessee line had 
been surveyed and partly graded. In 18(56 a bill 
drawn in accordance with^the original plan, was in- 
troduced in the Senate to consolidate these two 
roads and the North Carolina Railroad under the 
name of ''The North Carolina Railroad Company." 
Morehead, now apjtroaching the end of his long and 
useful career, strongly endorsed and supported this 
measure. One of his last public \itterances was an 
appeal to the stockholders of the North Carolina 
Railroad Company to throw their powerful influ- 
ence in favor of the consummation of the great plans 
for which he had given the best service of his life. 
After giving a brief resume of the railroad work 
done in the State he said : 

"Here let us pause and take a survey of what has 
been done in seven years towards this great work. 
From Beaufort Harbor to Goldsboro the Atlantic 
and North Carolina Railroad Comi)any have built 
ninety-six miles. From Goldsboro to Charlotte you 
[the North Carolina Railroad Co.] have built two 
hundred and twenty-three miles. From Salisbuiy 
to within four miles of Morganton the Western 
1. Raleigh Register, June 25, 1853. 



146 Ante-Bbllum Builders 

North Carolina Eailroad have built seventy-six miles 
. . . making in all three hundred and ninety-five 
miles, from which deduct forty-three miles from Sal- 
isbury to Charlotte, and we have actually built of 
this great line three hundred and fifty-two miles in 
one continuous line. Think of it! Seven years! 
In the lifetime of a State or nation seven years is 
but as a moment in its existence. It would not 
cover the dawning of its existence. In the great 
day of a nation's improvements seven years would 
not be the sunrise of that day. We have done this 
great work in the twilight of our great day of in- 
ternal improvement — a day which dawned so beauti- 
fully upon us, but which became enveloped in that 
gloom which shrouds the nation in mourning. But 
let us not despair. The day which dawned so beauti- 
fully upon us will yet reach its meridian splendor. 
Then let us be up and doing . . . and then the hopes, 
the dreams of the great and good Caldwell and Gas- 
ton Avill be realized. . . . You have the honor of be- 
ing the pioneers in this great work executed in sec- 
tions. Do yourselves now the honor to consolidate 
the whole and complete the original design. You, 
the most powerful and most independent of the three 
corporations, can, with much grace, propose to your 
sister corporations upon terms of justice and equity 
manifesting selfishness in naught but your name. 
Yield not that. The new consolidated corporation 
should be still ''The North Carolina Railroad Com- 
pany." This will be a corporation worthy of you, 
of your State, and of the great destinies that await 
it."i 

1. Letter to Stockholders, July 17, 1866. 



OF North Carolina 147 

What this great destiny was no man had foreseen 
so clearly as he. The traveler of 11)14 along the line 
of the North Carolina Railroad sees the fulfilment 
of Morehead's dreams of 1850. He finds himself in 
one of the most productive regions of the New World. 
He traverses it from one end to the other at a speed 
of forty miles an hour, surrounded by every comfort 
and convenience of modern travel. He passes 
through a region bound together by a thousand 
miles of steel rails, by telegraph and telephone lines, 
and by nearly two thousand miles of improved coun- 
try roads. He finds a population engaged not only 
in agriculture, but in manufacturing, in commerce, 
in transportation, and in a hundred other enter- 
prises. Instead of a few old fashioned handlooms 
turning out annually less than |400,000 worth of 
"home-made" articles, he hears the hum of three 
hundred and sixty modern factories, operating two 
millions of spindles and looms by steam, water, and 
electricity, employing more than fifty millions of 
capital, and sending their products to the uttermost 
ends of the earth. His train passes through farm 
lands that, since Morehead began his work, have in- 
creased six fold in value, that produce annually 
ten times as much cotton and seventy-five times as 
much tobacco. From his car window instead of the 
four hundred and sixty-six log huts that passed for 
schoolhouses in 1850, with their handful of pupils, 
he beholds a thousand schoolhouses, alive with the 
energy and activity of one hundred thousand school 
children. His train carries him from Goldsboro 
through Raleigh, Durham, Burlington, Greensboro, 
High Point, Lexington, Salisbury, Concord, Char- 
lotte — villages that have grown into cities, old fields 



148 Antp>Bellum Builders 

and cross roads that have become thriving centers 
of industry and culture. Better than all else, he 
finds himself among a people, no longer character- 
ized by their lethargy, isolation and ignorance, but 
bristling with energy, alert to every opportunity, 
fired with the spirit of the modern world, and with 
their faces steadfastly set toward the future. 

The foundation on which all this prosperity and 
progress rests is the work done by John M. More- 
head or inspired by him. No well informed man 
can be found today in North Carolina who will dis- 
pute his primacy among the railroad builders of the 
State. The North Carolina Railroad, the Atlantic 
and North Carolina Railroad, the Western North 
Carolina Railroad, the connecting link between the 
North Carolina and the Richmond and Danville 
railroads from Greensboro to Danville, all bear wit- 
ness of his supremacy in this field. In one of the 
finest passages of his message to the General Assem- 
bly in 1842 he urged the building of good country 
roads; today there are five thousand miles of im- 
proved rural highways in North Carolina. He rec- 
ommended the building of a Central Highway from 
Morehead City through Raleigh to the Tennessee 
line; today we have just witnessed the completion 
of a great State Highway i)iercing the very heart of 
the State almost along the very route he suggested 
seventy years ago. He suggested plans for extensive 
improvements of our rivers and harbors; today a 
*'thirty-foot-channel-to-the-sea" has become the slo- 
gan of our chief port and the National Government 
is spending annually hundreds of thousands of dol- 
lars in the improvement of the Cape Fear, the Neuse, 
the Pamlico and other rivers of Eastern North Caro- 
lina. He urged the construction by the National 



OF North Carolina 149 

Government of an inland waterway for our coast- 
wise vessels thiongh ramlico Sound to Beaufort 
harbor; seventy years have passed since then, this 
enterprise has become national in its scope, the Fed- 
eral Government has assumed charge of it, and the 
whole nation is anticipating the completion in the 
near future of an inland waterway from Maine 
through I'amlico Sound and Beaufort Harbor to 
Florida. First of all our statesmen Morehead real- 
ized the possibility of establishing at Beaufort a 
great world port; and although this dream has not 
yet been realized there are not lacking today men 
noted throughout the business world for their prac- 
tical wisdom, inspired by no other purpose than 
commercial success, who have not hesitated to stake 
large fortunes on the ultimate realization of this 
dream also, A twentieth century statesman sent be- 
fore his time into the world of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, Governor Morehead, as a distinguished scholar 
has declared, ''would have been more at home in 
North Carolina today than would any other of ouv 
ante-bellum governors. He has been dead forty 
years, and they have been j^ears of constant change 
and unceasing development. But so wide were his 
sympathies, so vital were his aims, so far sighted 
were his public policies, and so clearly did he fore- 
see the larger North Carolina of schools, railroads 
and cotton mills, that he would be as truly a con- 
temporary in the twentieth century as he was a lead- 
er in the nineteenth."! 



1. Smith, C. A.: "John Motley Morehead." Biographical 
History of N. C, Vol. 2, pp. 250-59. 



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